[ahartmetz]

The pre-NT Windows architecture was interesting for its "hack value" (remember that expression?), but as a user, even a technically minded one, reliability and absence of arbitrary limitations was more important.

DOS-based Windows had two main things going for it at the time, for users: It could run on average computers, and as you mentioned it could run most DOS software - most worked from Windows and all by simply stopping at DOS in the boot process (I almost always did the latter, I had no excess performance to give away).