If you are old enough to remember the days when you had to use an operating system where the GUI typically consisted of two or three different colors of text, you can probably remember how irritating it could sometimes be trying to find the location of a particular drive, so that you could load up a particular file. And then, since there was no such thing as multitasking back in those days (even though it has become so automatic that human beings are expected to do it naturally nowadays), you had to stop one program if you wanted to so much as check out one aspect of another (or a file which could only be opened by another) program. But then, like a dark horse out of the mists, there came Windows 3.1 to save the day- or at least to make working a little bit easier.
While it would seem clunky and complicated to the overly pampered users of today’s operating systems (and especially the people who would seriously whine, “Where is the music, and the automatic Internet connectivity, and the streaming video and virtual desktop?”), Windows 3.1 was one of the first operating systems in the world that used the “point and click” style of interface that has taken over the computing world these days. But back in those days, that kind of thing was just about the biggest advancement since the abacus was invented.
Granted, the pointing and clicking and the mouse itself had actually been around for a few years (and had also been a part of an early Apple operating system) prior to its implementation in Windows. But if you notice, who has been doing that for the longest time? The basic goal of Microsoft has always been to facilitate the success of other businesses (which is the surest route to creating real wealth). And if Windows 3.1 was the prototypical example of that goal, they are still living it.