Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!uwvax!speedy!thaler
From: thaler@speedy.cs.wisc.edu (Maurice Thaler)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: MS Windows 2.x and 286 - what's the
Message-ID: <6599@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 5 Nov 88 16:52:28 GMT
References: <386@fauern.UUCP> <45900172@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@spool.cs.wisc.edu
Reply-To: thaler@speedy.cs.wisc.edu (Maurice Thaler)
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 29

This has been said before, but if you are running ANYTHING besides
WINDOWS specific programs and you are looking for multitasking, 
DESQVIEW is a much better alternative. Just for grins, I started up
6 copys of DBASEII up on my 3Meg machine without having to do any
swapping to disk. Try doing this with WINDOWS386. Desqview was recently
upgraded along with QEMM to a more robust and less memory hungry
version. If you are into multitasking, it is really worth looking at.
I typically run communications, dos window, and TC 2.0 compiler with
very good speed. It is nice to be able to download/communicate in one
window, work on some C project in another , and be able to run test
programs from either the C or the downloading without having to break
out of any task. You could theoretically do this with WIN386, but I
suspect I would need more than my 3 Meg. of memory. 
The latest version of Desqview is 2.2, and QEMM is 4.2. A must for
386 users....

I have to admit I use WINDOWS also, but mostly for access to desktop
publishing stuff I do. I really think it is obnoxious that the WIN386
interface is absolutely incompatable with QEMM386. This means that when
you are running WIN386, you have to reboot without QEMM in your
config.sys. It would be nice if WIN386 provided some of the same
services as QEMM does, but it insists on doing its memory management
FROM WINDOWS. Qemm is useful just in DOS, since it changes EXTENDED 386
memory to EXPANDED 386 memory, useful for disk caching, LOTUS, etc. 
For example, WIN386 suggests using their cache SMARTDRV.SYS in EXPANDED
memory is more effective than in EXTENDED memory, but since your 386
memory is considered extended memory until you load WIN386, this is not
an option.  ARGH!  Windows is a fun interface, Desqview is an effective
interface.