zimmer@cod.NOSC.MIL (Thomas L. Zimmerman) (02/18/91)
Has anyone got any experience with the new Geoworks Ensemble package?
I am very interested in running this on my T1000SE as an alternative
to Microsoft Works. Unfortunatly, none of the salesman I have talked
to knew if this package could be slimmed down to fit within the
2-3 megabytes of disk storage I have available (between RAM disk and
1.4M floppy). I have managed to fit quite a few packages that
say they require a hard disk onto my system, but I hate to spend
$150 only to find out how if it fits.
Thanks,
Lee
--
Lee Zimmerman, Naval Ocean Systems Center, Code 421, San Diego, CA, 92152
{arpa,mil}net: zimmer@nosc.mil
uucp: {ihnp4,akgua,decvax,dcdwest,ucbvax}!sdcsvax!nosc!zimmergraff@mlpvm2.iinus1.ibm.com (Michael Graff) (02/19/91)
I'm running Ensemble on my laptop with a 40M hard disk. It's a great package. I've heard of people trying to squeeze it onto a 1.44M floppy. As I understand it, a large part of Ensemble is the fonts. They also keep around a lot of display and printer drivers that you don't need. So if you could trim that out, you might make it fit. You would probably need to start by installing it on a hard disk, then trimming out files, then move the trimmed version to a diskette. I suspect the performance on a floppy wouldn't be very good. GEOS (the underlying operating system for Ensemble) is fairly disk-intensive, swapping programs in and out, loading objects from disk, and so on. So while it might be made to fit, I'm not sure it would be worth the trouble, due to the performance. ...Michael
zimmer@cod.NOSC.MIL (Thomas L. Zimmerman) (02/23/91)
I got 3 mail responses to my query about Geoworks Ensemble product.
All three said that Ensemble is an impressive product - well integrated,
very good performance, impressive graphics and output capabilities.
However, for low-end laptop use its not going to work - it requires
about 3M of memory, requires a mouse, and because it operates in
graphics mode - is not shown to its best advantage on a CGA screen.
It also lacks a spreadsheet - though from what I've heard other
places Geoworks continues development on more applications for their
environment. Sounds like a great alternative to Windows(tm) for
your desktop PC or 286/VGA laptop - but looks like I'll stick with
Works(tm) for my T100SE.
Unfortunatly, that still leaves me without a simple object-oriented
drawing tool (something like MacDraw). There are several of these in
the Mac market, but the PC world seems to consist of either cad programs
that are overkill and not very intuitive or presentation programs that
are not very flexible. Any ideas? GEM Draw might be about right, but I'm
not sure it will fit on my laptop. I also saw someone playing with
Word Perfects new drawing package a couple days ago - it has potential,
but again, does anyone know how "big" it is?
Lee
--
Lee Zimmerman, Naval Ocean Systems Center, Code 421, San Diego, CA, 92152
{arpa,mil}net: zimmer@nosc.mil
uucp: {ihnp4,akgua,decvax,dcdwest,ucbvax}!sdcsvax!nosc!zimmergraff@mlpvm2.iinus1.ibm.com (Michael Graff) (02/23/91)
Correction: It needs 3M of *disk space*. It runs fine with 512K of *memory*. As for the spreadsheet, there's talk of a basic spreadsheet being included in version 2 this fall, and also an unnamed third party developing a full-featured spreadsheet as a separate product. ...Michael
dan@rna.UUCP (Dan Ts'o) (02/24/91)
In article <9102222054.AA03181@grape.ecs.clarkson.edu> graff@mlpvm2.iinus1.ibm.com writes: >Correction: It needs 3M of *disk space*. It runs fine with 512K of >*memory*. How about 2.4Mb, the amount of RAM disk on the T1000SE ?