baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) (07/04/90)
Though I haven't had a chance to play with Windows 3.0 yet, from all the discussion and everything I've heard, it sounds like it's a reasonable clone of the current generation of Macintosh system software. But I wonder how well it will compare to System 7.0 and beyond. For example, I think that System 7.0's "publish and subscribe" feature is an excellent step forward in the development not only of the Mac OS, but of operating systems in general. DDE under Windows is all fine and well if you have all the applications running at the same time, but what if you don't? What if one application is running on a PC down the hall, and another is running on the PC on your desk? What happens if the guy down the hall turns his PC off for the night and goes home? How about aliases? There's no support in Windows for them, but the idea is great, and it sounds like the implementation of them in System 7.0 will be done with some care (i.e., so aliases are intuitive to use). Someone posted that Windows 3.0 supports all the major networking schemes (Novell, etc.). But what does this really mean? Under System 7.0, I can create public folders for others to use without having to run network administration programs and the like; can I do this under Windows 3.0, or is Windows' network support limited to low-level operations? Note that I'm not even getting into things like multiple monitors, 32-bit color support, simple networking of Macintoshes and LaserWriters, etc. -- current features of System 6.0 which Windows doesn't really support (or doesn't support either very well or very intuitively). There are a lot of features in the Mac, both in current system software and in System 7.0, that go a long way towards empowering individual, inexperienced users. That's one of the things anyone who has *used* a Mac has noticed. If Microsoft has done similar things with Windows, that's great, but have they really? Microsoft is playing a great game of catchup, and that anyone is even considering Windows as competition for the Mac shows how far they've come. But I wonder whether they're always going to wait for Apple to make the next move when it comes to extending the power of personal computers. -- Steve Baumgarten | "New York... when civilization falls apart, Davis Polk & Wardwell | remember, we were way ahead of you." baumgart@esquire.dpw.com | cmcl2!esquire!baumgart | - David Letterman
mbrookov@diana.cair.du.edu (Matthew B. Brookover) (07/04/90)
In article <2135@esquire.UUCP> baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (Steve Baumgarten) writes: >Someone posted that Windows 3.0 supports all the major networking >schemes (Novell, etc.). But what does this really mean? Under System >7.0, I can create public folders for others to use without having to >run network administration programs and the like; can I do this under >Windows 3.0, or is Windows' network support limited to low-level >operations? My undstanding is that windows 3.0 will break unsupported networking schemes. They have built in support for novell and etc, but if you are using an unsupported package it may not work. On our novell networks we are running Novell 2.15c with the packet driver version of the lan driver from BYU, and then using the public domain packet drivers written by Clarkson. This allows the us to run NCSA telnet and Novell concurretly through the same ethernet board. (this is somthing that the Mac handles much better than MS-DOS) I have heard form other sources that the virtural memory in Windows 3.0 will keep the packetdriver from reading and writeing to and from buffers that belong to the client applications. Has anybody tried this out under windows? Matthew B. Brookover mbrookov@diana.cair.du.edu