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From: cs_b144@ux.kingston.ac.uk (Ian Stickland)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
Subject: Re: OS2 coming on strong (pc-rag)
Message-ID: <1991May23.154339.7603@kingston.ac.uk>
Date: 23 May 91 15:43:39 GMT
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Reply-To: cs_b144@ux.kingston.ac.uk (Ian Stickland)
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I've used Freelance/G on a PS/2 model 80 (16MHz 80386) with 10 meg of
memory and plenty of room for the swap file. I've read the offending
article and I have to agree with points made about it being sluggish
and the lack of printer drivers. 

	1). Unless you have an old IBM 3852 Color (tm U.S.A.) Jetprinter
	    or a very expensive colour postcript QMS printer, you can
	    only get black and white output. As the IBM printer is pretty
	    bad and discontinued (by Canon) you are left with colour PS.
	    For a paint package I think this is a bit pointless. What we
	    need are printer drivers for printers such as the HP PaintJet,
	    which to my knowledge is very common. (If one exists let me
	    know, as I need a PaintJet driver for OS/2 badly). Until such
	    drivers exist it would be foolish to recommend Freelance/G to
	    anyone except those lucky enough to afford colour postscript.

	2). It is more than sluggish on the above configuration with IBM
	    OS/2 EE 1.2. It's downright awful. It was the only process on
	    the system and it was struggling. Printing near enough seized 
	    the whole machine. It really was pathetic. The printer was a
	    Xerox 4030 in HP LJII emulation mode with 2.5MB memory.

I have to disagree completely though when they conclude that Freelance for
Windows will be worth waiting for on the showing of Freelance/G. It won't. 
It will be even slower, and a real memory and resource hog.

Another gripe against Freelance/G, is that when you send a presentation to
print you get a formatting ducument dialog box appear with a Cancel button.
I COULD NOT PRESS IT, THE POINTER WAS DISABLED and showing the user's worst
enemy the HOURGLASS. Why provide a cancel button when you can't press it??

Seeing as I have only used it on 1.2, the speed problem may have improved on
1.3 (if it has I'll be impressed, as it would be SOME improvement), but the
printer situation has not, if the 1.3 announcement letters containing supported
printers were anything to go by. 

I don't care who people think should write the drivers, get on with it. (IBM,
Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, it's one of you three...).

Despite the above, I think Freelance/G is a great product and Lotus deserves
a lot of praise for it. It is extremely easy to get a smart presentation on
screen, I managed a couple of slides in about half-an-hour after installation,
and no I've never used the DOS version. (I've hardly used DOS ever infact, OS/2
rules for me). The performace needs tuning, and the printer support needs to 
exist in the first place, when that's been done I'm sure that Freelance/G will
be an editors choice and expose the windows version for what it really is, and I'm sure I don't have to go into my feelings on that....	

Yes, I do find PC Magazine to be **VERY** anti-OS/2, especially some of the 
colomnists, but then it's a free world for some of us.


       Cheers,
               Ian Stickland.

P.S. And this really is an afterthought, shouldn't this be in os2.apps.....