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From: pnl@hpfinote.HP.COM (Peter Lim)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: Re: Deskview or Windows?
Message-ID: <35010016@hpfinote.HP.COM>
Date: 17 Sep 90 17:08:34 GMT
References: <1990Sep13.154000.3257@mks.com>
Organization: Hewlett Packard CICD
Lines: 61

> We use Deskview 2.26 on a pair of PS/2 70's.  We bought a copy of
> Windows 3.0 (for another machine) and tried it on the 386's.
> We didn't like it very well.  It was pretty but it seemed much
> harder to set up and use then Deskview.  It could be that it just
>
Where are you from ?  :-). Windows is harder to setup than DesqView ?
Well .... I can only think of one situation where that will be true.
That is if you only run DOS programs and no Windows program. Even
that, given that you have a 386 machine; you should be able to just
run the Windows setup and when that finish, type WIN to start running
Windows.

> has a longer, steeper learning curve but in any event it
> exhausted my patience and I kind of gave up on it.  In particular
>
And Windows have 'steeper learning curve' ? When most Windows program
looks the same ? and you hardly need any manual ?

> we had problems running in background and switching between
> graphics windows (or for that matter doing anything with
> graphics windows).
> 
For simple starting. You could have just double click the 'DOS prompt'
icon and run you DOS program as per normal. And things will run in
background by default (if I remember correctly; or do you have to check
the []Background box ??). To switch around just use ALT-TAB like you
would use ALT-n (a number) in DesqView. What's so hard ?

> Windows does have a much more powerful graphical user interface
> (icons etc) and in general I think it has a lot of promise but
> I think I will wait to see the next version.
> 
The only thing I have against Windows is that a single DOS task running
in a DOS session is a fair bit slower than the same one under DesqView.
But, I've tried two simultaneous tasks (compiling, doing lot's of disk
accesses) running only slightly slower than one of them. For details,
I compiled two copies of GNUPLOT in background under 386 enhanced mode.
Compiling one alone took about 14 minutes. Compiling both of them took
about 16 minutes ! Of cours, compiling one copy under plain DOS took
only about 5 minutes  :-(.

And ... I have lots of RAM --- 10 MB to be precise. And Windows make
good use of them. If you are trying to run Windows with 2 MB of RAM,
it will be a bit embarassing. And DesqView will have the upper hand.
Otherwise, Windows should run very well except for some performance
penalty which I think is a fair price to pay for the convenience of
nice graphics interface. Other than not being able to run most DOS
extender programs, I find Windows runs more DOS program than DesqView 2.26 !
BTW, Windows runs one DOS extender program --- the Zortech C++ compiler.


Regards,                       ## Life is fast enough as it is ........
Peter Lim.                     ## .... DON'T PUSH IT !!          >>>-------,
                               ########################################### :
E-mail:  plim@hpsgwg.HP.COM     Snail-mail:  Hewlett Packard Singapore,    :
Tel:     (065)-279-2289                      (ICDS, ICS)                   |
Telnet:        520-2289                      1150 Depot Road,           __\@/__
  ... also at: pnl@hpfipnl.HP.COM            Singapore   0410.           SPLAT !


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