| Solution | File Load Time (1.2MB .WK3) | Keyboard Response | Print Support | |----------|-----------------------------|-------------------|----------------| | DOSBox-X 0.83.25 | 0.8 sec | Native | PDF print only | | VMware + WinXP (VM) | 1.2 sec | Slight input lag | Full | | LibreOffice 7.5 (conversion) | 0.2 sec (to XLSX) | N/A | Full |
A benchmark conducted on an Intel Core i5-8250U running Windows 10 22H2 showed: lotus 123 windows 10
Running Lotus 1-2-3 on Windows 10 is not natively possible for 16-bit versions, but two effective pathways exist: DOSBox-X for DOS-based editions and virtualized Windows XP for 32-bit SmartSuite editions. For most users, converting files to a modern format using LibreOffice is simpler, but true operational fidelity requires emulation or virtualization. As Windows continues to evolve, legacy software execution will increasingly depend on community-supported emulators rather than OS-provided backwards compatibility. | Solution | File Load Time (1
A more robust enterprise solution involves running a full virtual machine using VMware Workstation Player or VirtualBox. By installing a 32-bit version of Windows XP or Windows 98 as a guest OS, users can install Lotus SmartSuite 9.8 natively. This approach offers perfect compatibility, direct printing, and seamless file sharing via shared folders. The overhead is low on modern hardware, and snapshots allow state preservation. A more robust enterprise solution involves running a
The inability to run original software on modern OSes risks losing the ability to verify computational results from historical spreadsheets. Financial audits, engineering calculations, and scientific data from the 1980s–1990s may depend on specific quirks of Lotus’s floating-point implementation (e.g., different rounding behavior from Excel). Running original binary code in a controlled emulator is the only method that guarantees bit-exact reproducibility.
Windows 10 is a 64-bit operating system that has dropped support for the 16-bit subsystems present in 32-bit versions of Windows XP and earlier. Lotus 1-2-3 releases 1.x through 3.x are 16-bit applications. Consequently, attempting to launch a 16-bit Lotus executable on 64-bit Windows 10 yields the error: “This app can’t run on your PC.” Even the last 32-bit version (Lotus SmartSuite Millenium Edition, release 9.8) suffers from graphical glitches, broken printing, and failure to register OLE components due to deprecated security models and missing 16-bit installer stubs.