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From: nmiller@mstr.hgc.edu (norman miller)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Another county heard from
Message-ID: <545@mstr.hgc.edu>
Date: 13 Aug 90 14:12:30 GMT
Sender: news@mstr.hgc.edu
Reply-To: nmiller@mstr.hgc.edu (norman miller)
Distribution: usa
Organization: The Hartford Graduate Center, Hartford CT.
Lines: 67

Imagine this: a firm announces a revolutionary product, say a new
coffee-maker.  The announcement is followed by reams of free
publicity in leading newspapers.  The hottest thing since the
invention of halvah, it's said.  The usual contingent of techni-
cal-novelty addicts, myself among them, rush to buy and test.

Mild disappointment: it appears to be a sluggish drip pot,
nothing more.  This time they read the directions carefully and
try again.  Same thing: sluggish drip pot.  They've been had.

What do the buyers do?  If the turnip in question is a coffee
pot, they cry foul and call the cops.  If it's a computer program
sold by the world's largest and richest software firm, they tend
to blame themselves for not having learned to use the software
properly.

But in fact, dear friends, Windows 3.0 is simply a very slow drip
pot.  Watch this: "Standard mode is the normal operating mode for
running Windows.  This mode provides access to expanded memory
and also lets you switch among non-Windows applications" (User's
Guide, p. 10).  What are non-Windows applications?   Why, nothing
much: just Word Perfect, Lotus 123, Quattro, Procomm, etc.  In
short, if you happen to own some of the most popular (and expen-
sive) software on the market, Microsoft will now enable you to
*switch* from one to the other, something that Software Carousel
has enabled one to do for at least 4 years.  And, where Carousel
is elegant and speedy, Windows--even with a mouse--is cumbersome
and unbelievably slow.  So slow,in fact, that Windows 3.0 is
almost worth buying as a specimen of comically inept programming.

Multi-tasking?  Only if you own a 386 machine.  Desqview enables
even lowly 286 owners to run several programs at once (and
swiftly at that)?  So what?  Desqview hasn't got quill-pen and
card-file icons (or the darling hour-glass that asks you to wait
for a routine which--were it one of many old public domain
routines--would long ago have been up and running).  Desqview
doesn't require that you wait as much as ten seconds--along with
hard-disk noises suggestive of a Mexican school bus climbing a
mountain--in order to read the help screen?  Again, so what? 
Windows will put a real working clock on your screen!  Wow.

Now if Microsoft had meant to play fair with its customers, it
would have warned potential users that a 386 was  virtually a
necessity.  It would not have given the name of "standard mode"
to a manifestly sub-standard product.  But that would severely
have limited the demand.  God forbid.  Windows 3.0 may indeed be
great on a 386.  I note that a whole slew of manufacturers are
now shipping it with their machines, which suggests that it may
be a winner.  What's unforgiveable is the arrogant misrepresenta-
tion to the huge number of non-386 owners that Windows is for
them.

Do I seem bitter?  I really meant to tell of my bafflement.  For
in fact, I have been alternately so enraged and yet so sure it's
my fault that I've installed and erased Windows four times in 2
weeks.  (That takes patience, by the way: Microsoft ships Windows
on microthin cheapos that may or may not be recognized by one's
disk drive.  And the first batch of Windows contained a floppy
which was not only empty, but hadn't even been formatted.)  So,
while I'm pretty certain by now that I've given Windows a fair
test, I hope that some of you out there will either confirm that
I'm right or point out some silly dumb-head thing I did wrong. 
Surely it isn't just the slowest drip pot ever made.  Or is it?

Thus doth hype make ditherers of us all.

Norman Miller