crane@fortune.UUCP (06/08/84)
I installed and played around with DesQ today. Fortune has a PC with
256K memory, and a 10 meg disk drive.
Positive:
Good general idea.
Nice set of features.
You can fragment the screen with up to nine windows. (Like
watching a baseball game through a knothole in a
wooden fence.) However, you can zoom any window up
to full screen size.
Works with mouse or cursor.
Fairly easy to capture any series of keystrokes in customized macroes
Macroes get added to menus automatically.
You can overlap or embed windows.
You can move and resize windows and control their color.
Negative:
Very slow.
Manual is very long and intimidating though well written.
Very slow.
Inconsistent user interface -- e.g. escaping out of menus, actions
Very slow.
You have to memorize yet another set of cryptic commands
ala Wordstar, vi, or emacs
Very slow.
Maybe this is an unfair rap for DesQ. I'll be working more with it over
next week or so, and IF my opinion changes I'll let you know.
I would definitaly NOT recommend it for a technical person who really
knows DOS or for a speed typist working in Wordstar. (Actually I
wouldn't recommend the PC for those kind of people anyway.) But particularly
not under DesQ.
The best and only advice I can give anybody contemplating the purchase
of DesQ or putting money into the company is "try before you buy".
John Crane
UUCP: {sri-unix,amd70,hpda,harpo,ihnp4,allegra}!fortune!crane
DDD: (415)595-8444
USPS: Fortune Systems Corp, 101 Twin Dolphins Drive, Redwood City, CA 94065howell@unc.UUCP (06/08/84)
What is DesQ?