Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!pacbell!indetech!fiver!palowoda
From: palowoda@fiver.UUCP (Bob Palowoda)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: DESQview, any opinions out there?
Message-ID: <142@fiver.UUCP>
Date: 26 Aug 89 20:07:56 GMT
References: <5190037@hplsla.HP.COM>
Organization: Fiver Communications  Fremont, Ca
Lines: 44

From article <5190037@hplsla.HP.COM>, by davidr@hplsla.HP.COM (David M. Reed):

 [some text removed]
> 
> DESQview has true multi-tasking (even on a 286 system with EEMS), while
> MSWindows can not do it properly even in Windows/386.  DESQview cares very

  I got to stick my two cents in here. For many years I tried many
different multi-tasking programs for DOS and even if some worked
well like DESQview I would eventually find some way to crash the
system. I have tried DESQview, VM386, Taskview, MSwindows, Double
DOS etc. One of the *most* important things to me is running a
multi-tasking envirnment that dosn't crash the system. Performance
and limited memory where not a concern. What I didn't like was 
running some program that would lock up the system while all the
other programs where doing disk writes and than corrupting my
disk fat tables. Than after that I would have to reformat over
200meg and reinstall the software. 
     
 The problem seems to be when running programs compiled with
MSC 286 (could be others). What happens is that one program running
in a window writes to the address space of a program running
in another window. If it writes to the execution code of the
other window it alters the the other a number of things can happen,
most of the time it locks up the system or worse writes incorrect
data to the disk (sometimes not updateing the fat tables). 
This has happened to me more than once. 

 I started running DOS under UNIX with a dos emulator and these problems
don't seem to occur. The multi-tasking of dos under unix seems to run
more smoothly. Slower but doing alot of disk writes dosn't bring the
system to it's knees like it does with Desqview. And you get a full
640k in the dos partition. Of coarse thier is drawbacks to this.
It is expensive and your sure to find some software it cannot 
run under the emulator. 

---Bob
 
  
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