[ZoFreX]

Back in Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 I remember this stuff actually working quite well, a lot of people I knew were running Windows with non-default DPI settings. As newer versions came out, and also as people started using third party GUI toolkits more and more, things started getting less consistent.

[kolme]

I think those old settings only concern fonts. Icons and other pixel-measured things would still look ridiculously small (making it a mess of small-things-with-big-fonts).

[tanzam75]

Windows was originally designed to be DPI-independent.

After all, Windows 1.0 had to run on 320x200 CGA adapters -- complete with non-square pixels.