Windows 3.x/9.x/ME were Microsoftís first operating systems with a graphical interface. These operating systems were based on Microsoftís DOS operating system developed in the 1970s and used through the middle 1980s. These operating systems were originally targeted at all users - home, business, education, and scientific. This series of operating systems did not have the power to effectively run many powerful applications at once. Because of the limitations of Microsoft DOS, Microsoft has abandoned this line of operating systems in favor of Windows XP. As the needs of business users grew, Microsoft changed the target of these operating systems to home and some education users with business, scientific, and academic users being encouraged to use Windows NT Workstation and the later Windows 2000 Professional.
If you were to look at a software list of Windows products, you would find just about any piece of software to fit just about any application including many commercial, shareware, and free products.