news@sun.uucp (news) (03/01/88)
>I've been using Windows386 on a GoldStar machine with 640K and a 2mg >Intel motherboard, hooked to both an HP Laser Jet500+ and an >Applewriter Plus. PageMaker works just fine--as a matter of fact, >printing is faster. WARNING TO THOSE WHO ARE CONSIDERING WINDOWS/386: We just had a NASTY surprise with Windows/386. We've been running the 2.0 release of 286 Windows for a while, and release 1 for a long time prior to that. We use a Hercules graphics board w/amber monitor for our work -- since Pagemaker can't do color anyway (neither can our Laserjet), why put on an EGA/VGA monitor? Besides, the monochrome is easier on the eyes in text mode. Guess what? Windows/386 doesn't support HERCULES cards! That's right -- EGA, CGA, VGA, or NOTHING! Needless to say, we were quite miffed about this -- especially since we found out AFTER we bought the product. It's unusable for us due to this limitation. Also, from the documentation, it appears that the package uses only EXPANDED memory. What's this?! We have 2M of EXTENDED memory in our '386 system, as do most other users (how many EXPANDED memory boards can YOU find in 32-bit?). So that 'feature' appears to be useless as well (I can't verify this as the darn thing doesn't run on our graphics board!) Without the extra memory there's NO advantage to running the '386 version over the '286 release 2.0 version that I can see (except perhaps enhanced performance). Thanks Microsoft, for making a product less compatible as it's "improved". I wonder why the Hercules support is gone.... any ideas? If anyone wants it, we have the Windows/386 here, and will let it go nice and cheap. Call or write. ---- Karl Denninger | Data: +1 312 566-8912 Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. | Voice: +1 312 566-8910 ...ihnp4!ddsw1!karl | "Quality solutions for work or play" ---------------------------------------- Submissions to: desktop@plaid.sun.com Administrivia to: desktop-request@plaid@sun.com UUCP: {amdahl,decwrl,hplabs,ihnp4}!sun!plaid!desktop{-request}