thegerm@alchemy.UUCP (Joel Lingenfelter) (06/10/90)
I played with it the other day at work, and noticed that the system takes up a mere 8 mb on your hard drive. In addition, fully installed the thing leaves 192k free in your primary 640k. Not so hot eh? Another gripe is that it is not compatible with a significant amount of hardware out there for the ibm world. My guess is that system 7 will be well worth the wait, and will make windows look as archaic as ms-dos. I haven't really fooled around extensively with windows yet, but it doesn't seem all that great, me being used to the mac interface. It is, however, a considerable improvement over the old windows 286... Joel Lingenfelter, Biola University "I'm just a student so the university speaks for me..."
folta@tove.cs.umd.edu (Wayne Folta) (06/10/90)
I played with a friend's 3.0 for about an hour and observed the following:
1. The Control Panel is not "pull-downable" as the Mac's is... it is a separate
program. That makes it more of a pain to use. Thinking back, the
Control Panel may have only been a folder in the Program Manager, so
maybe it is modular, though.
It allows you to set up a background that is tiled, full-screen, or
bit-mapped. The "Sound" option intrigued me until I chose it and found
that it only allows you to chose "On" or "Off". There were several
other items like that.
2. The File Manager (you know, the "Mac-like" part) does not seem to have
a Mac-style iconic view. It did have name-style listings by name and
type, and a tree-style listing. Of course, you launch applications
based on the three-letter file extension, as they don't have long names
or file types.
There appeared to be no way to arrange things in the File Manager or
Program Manager and have them stay that way between boots. The Managers
insisted on grid-aligning everything at the bottom of the Program
Manager's window, for instance.
3. It doesn't really have a desktop like the Mac. You can iconify running
processes (and their windows) and move those on the desktop, but they don't
stay where you put them. Every boot sees the icons grid-aligned at the
bottom of the screen. And files cannot be dragged outside of the File
Manager's windows.
4. Due to the X-Windows-window-manager-like window frames, you get redundancies,
with programs having "Exit" under their file menu, but you can also exit
by selecting "Close" in the frame's menu. Can you guess how many times
I exited a program by choosing "Close", which I kept thinking would close
the window to an icon (from Sun experience)?
5. The kludges that MS has to do so that people can try to use a GUI without
a mouse cause problems. There are apparently no single-key keyboard
accelerators (ala the Mac's CMD-O to open or CMD-P to print, or CMD-C
to copy). You must use ALT and a letter to pull down the appropriate
menu, then another key to choose the option. The way they mark these
keystrokes (with underlines) makes their menus busy. And they made poor
choices, such as having both "Minimize" and "Maximize" for the frame
("Open" and "Close" would have allowed unique first letters).
6. From what I saw, Windows was pretty bullet-proof regarding incompatible
programs, as it killed them before they killed it.
7. It does virtual memory, and allows programs to exceed 640K, which is a
godsend for DOS.
8. If I used DOS, I'd immediately get Windows 3.0, but as a Mac user, I am
not overly impressed at the user level (of course, I did not program it,
so I cannot comment on their DDE, etc., which sounds neat).
--
Wayne Folta (folta@cs.umd.edu 128.8.128.8)tmyers@athena.mit.edu (Tracy S Myers) (06/10/90)
In article <27@alchemy.UUCP> thegerm@alchemy.UUCP (Joel Lingenfelter) writes: > > I played with it the other day at work, and noticed that the system takes >up a mere 8 mb on your hard drive. In addition, fully installed the thing >leaves 192k free in your primary 640k. Not so hot eh? Another gripe is that >it is not compatible with a significant amount of hardware out there for the >ibm world. My guess is that system 7 will be well worth the wait, and will >make windows look as archaic as ms-dos. I haven't really fooled around >extensively with windows yet, but it doesn't seem all that great, me being used >to the mac interface. It is, however, a considerable improvement over the old >windows 286... > >Joel Lingenfelter, Biola University >"I'm just a student so the university speaks for me..."
tmyers@athena.mit.edu (Tracy S Myers) (06/10/90)
In article <1990Jun10.153244.6180@athena.mit.edu> tmyers@athena.mit.edu (Tracy S Myers) writes: >In article <27@alchemy.UUCP> thegerm@alchemy.UUCP (Joel Lingenfelter) writes: >> > Please excuse this garbled message, my news program crashed when I tried to post it. Below is the (hopefully) intended version. In article <27@alchemy.UUCP> thegerm@alchemy.UUCP (Joel Lingenfelter) writes: > > I played with it the other day at work, and noticed that the system takes >up a mere 8 mb on your hard drive. In addition, fully installed the thing >leaves 192k free in your primary 640k. Not so hot eh? Another gripe is that >it is not compatible with a significant amount of hardware out there for the >ibm world. If you are going to discuss the weaknesses of a product, please have an informed opinion. Specifically, what hardware is it not compatible with? Do you know this for certain from experience or is this just gossip? As for leaving only 192k free in the primary 640k, are you sure about this? This sounds way out of line with what I have heard from a number of reputable sources. Without describing the particular system (e.g., network drivers, TSRs, device drivers, etc.) this tidbit is totally uninformative. As for MSW 3.0 taking 8MB of disk space, consider that several megs of fluff such as screen backgrounds and other such stuff is included in that figure. > My guess is that system 7 will be well worth the wait, and will >make windows look as archaic as ms-dos. I haven't really fooled around >extensively with windows yet, but it doesn't seem all that great, me being used >to the mac interface. If you haven't used it very much why are you wasting our time? >It is, however, a considerable improvement over the old >windows 286... > >Joel Lingenfelter, Biola University >"I'm just a student so the university speaks for me..." This thread looks like the beginning of another my computer is better than yours war. Please, if you are not in a position to make an informed judgement then post your opinion to comp.National_Enquirer. I use Macs, Suns, and DOS machines daily. I follow both the Mac and DOS groups. I am just as tired of listening to bozos who have little or no direct experience with a Mac telling me how superior MSW 3.0 will be. I am not an apologist for Apple or IBM. Intelligent discussion of the merits and problems of various platforms is interesting and improves our ability to make informed decisions. Vague, sweeping, and unsubstantiated claims only serve to confuse people, and correcting false information wastes an inordinate amount of resources. So please if you don't know, don't post. Tracy Myers
billj@b11.ingr.com (Bill Jones) (06/11/90)
tmyers@athena.mit.edu (Tracy S Myers) writes: >This thread looks like the beginning of another my computer is better >than yours war. Please, if you are not in a position to make an informed >judgement then post your opinion to comp.National_Enquirer. >Tracy Myers Actually, it didn't seem that way till you jumped in. I've been wanting to hear from someone who's actually touched the thing, and appreciate the post. As for not posting information, who are you mysterious and secret informed sources that contradict the previous poster. Without naming sources, your statements actually merit less consideration. Hey, I've got informed sources that tell me System 7.0 is due next week, Windows 3.0 will actually improve PC performance, and Santa Claus is having an affair with the Easter Bunny. Bill Jones Intergraph Corp. ...!uunet!ingr!billj
dankg@typhoon.Berkeley.EDU (Dan KoGai) (06/11/90)
In article <1990Jun10.154243.6742@athena.mit.edu> tmyers@athena.mit.edu (Tracy S Myers) writes: >Please excuse this garbled message, my news program crashed when >I tried to post it. Below is the (hopefully) intended version. You can easily cancel your message with Captal-C if you are rn user. And other newsreaders have capability of canceling article. Even though you have none, you can still post in control newsgroup to cancel message. >If you are going to discuss the weaknesses of a product, please have an >informed opinion. Specifically, what hardware is it not compatible >with? Do you know this for certain from experience or is this just gossip? >As for leaving only 192k free in the primary 640k, are you sure about this? >This sounds way out of line with what I have heard from a number of reputable >sources. Without describing the particular system (e.g., network drivers, >TSRs, device drivers, etc.) this tidbit is totally uninformative. As for >MSW 3.0 taking 8MB of disk space, consider that several megs of fluff such >as screen backgrounds and other such stuff is included in that figure. I haven't tried NEW Windows yet but 8 Megs on disk is quite believable --first Windows have to have more fonts because it's made compatible with different resolution screens. Second normal DOS has no Toolbox equvalent and Windows have to cover that. And to build Toolbox on Intel machines it's likely to be larger than MC68x00 because it has only 8 registers, opposed to 16 for Motorola's, making memory access more. And quite likely Window is not as polished as QuickDraw and its screen drawing rotine is larger. And possibly it uses different routines for different screen standard unlike QuickDraw (video board ROM takes care of QD on Mac). Plus DOS doesn't have Mac's resource so it uses more files. Old Window was already a disk gazzler. (I couldn't believe my eyes MS Word for Windows had 14 720k disks) >> My guess is that system 7 will be well worth the wait, and will >>make windows look as archaic as ms-dos. I haven't really fooled around >>extensively with windows yet, but it doesn't seem all that great, me being used >>to the mac interface. >If you haven't used it very much why are you wasting our time? Sigh. You can use k or killfile if you don't want to waste time. and it's not your disk space to pool news articles, is it? >>It is, however, a considerable improvement over the old >>windows 286... >This thread looks like the beginning of another my computer is better >than yours war. Please, if you are not in a position to make an informed >judgement then post your opinion to comp.National_Enquirer. Or you can kindly mail him. I welcome product report like his articles in general. At least he didn't flame anyone else's article. >I use Macs, Suns, and DOS machines daily. I follow both the Mac and >DOS groups. I am just as tired of listening to bozos who have little or >no direct experience with a Mac telling me how superior MSW 3.0 will be. >I am not an apologist for Apple or IBM. Intelligent discussion of the >merits and problems of various platforms is interesting and improves our >ability to make informed decisions. Vague, sweeping, and unsubstantiated >claims only serve to confuse people, and correcting false information >wastes an inordinate amount of resources. So please if you don't know, >don't post. And I'm tired of this kind of flames. I repeat that you could've used mail. So I give you back your words: If you don't even know how to cancel an article, don't post. ---------------- ____ __ __ + Dan The "DOSPhobia" Man ||__||__| + E-mail: dankg@ocf.berkeley.edu ____| ______ + Voice: +1 415-549-6111 | |__|__| + USnail: 1730 Laloma Berkeley, CA 94709 U.S.A |___ |__|__| + |____|____ + "What's the biggest U.S. export to Japan?" \_| | + "Bullshit. It makes the best fertilizer for their rice"
tmyers@athena.mit.edu (Tracy S Myers) (06/11/90)
In article <1990Jun11.021254.14167@agate.berkeley.edu> dankg@typhoon.Berkeley.EDU (Dan KoGai) writes: >In article <1990Jun10.154243.6742@athena.mit.edu> tmyers@athena.mit.edu (Tracy S Myers) writes: > >>Please excuse this garbled message, my news program crashed when >>I tried to post it. Below is the (hopefully) intended version. > > You can easily cancel your message with Captal-C if you are rn >user. And other newsreaders have capability of canceling article. Even >though you have none, you can still post in control newsgroup to cancel >message. While I am recovering in the burn ward, I will have lots of time to find out if I can cancel an article in the situation I was in. I realize that I probably did not make myself clear. I again apologize for posting my first message which included only the contents of the article I was submitting a follow-up to. Here is what happened. I edited my response and tried to send it. At this point rn crashed and my terminal hung. I logged back in (which takes a long time on athena) and instead of my edited article being posted my article only included the text of the article to which I was responding. I was not aware that I could cancel the article at this point (i.e., once I had posted it and it shows up as a new article in my news). If I can in fact cancel the article at this point would some kind soul please let me know how to do this (by email). Before my fingers become too charred to type, let me try to clarify my point. I am very much interested in informed comparisons of various computers. What I objected to in a rather impolite fashion for which I humbly apologize is that the author of the original article posted a scathing review of a product which he used only briefly. Imagine a DOS user posting an article on how he used a mac for a few minutes and then saying how superior MSW and DOS are. If you are going to evaluate a product then you should at least be sufficiently knowledgeable about the product to make specific points. Sweeping conclusions of the sort the original author made only serve to muddy the waters. If you claim there exists a hardware compatability problem, then tell us what it is. I have been repeatedly flamed for being a DOS apologist. I am not. In the DOS groups, people who have never or only briefly used a mac go on and on about how superior some DOS software is compared to the mac. I have been similarly flamed in DOS groups for questioning the hype that MSW 3.0 has generated. Before MSW 3.0 was even released people who had never used it felt free to comment on its features and the effect it would have on the PC and the Mac. This is like Tipper Gore wanting to censor a song she has never listened to. I use both macs and DOS machines. Each has its merits and each has its weaknesses. Since I use both PC's and Macs, I am always interested in comparisons of the two because an intelligent comparison helps me to choose which machine is more suitible for a given task. Knowing these strengths and weaknesses allows one to make informed computing decisions. Zealotry only serves to misinform people, and the vague sweeeping statements in the original article serve precisely this purpose, which is just asking for another one of these my computer is better than yours wars. So, if you want to compare products please be familiar with all of them, make sure your remarks are based on direct experience, and make sure your facts are correct. Finally, please avoid sweeping religious statements and unsubstantiated gossip. Tracy Myers
aaron@jessica.stanford.edu (Aaron Wallace) (06/12/90)
In article <27@alchemy.UUCP> thegerm@alchemy.UUCP (Joel Lingenfelter) writes: > > I played with it the other day at work, and noticed that the system takes >up a mere 8 mb on your hard drive. *IF* you keep everything around--including PC Paintbrush, Terminal, Write, all the help files (they're quite large), "desk accessories", and such. If you have no use for these things, getting Windows 3.0 down to under 2 Meg is certainly possible. > In addition, fully installed the thing >leaves 192k free in your primary 640k. Not so hot eh? No, not so hot at all. Which is funny since I get about 350K free on a 640K machine. The point about Windows 3 is that it isn't restricted to the primary 640K. On my 4 meg machine I get about 4300K free--and there's a 512K disk cache installed, too. After loading Word for Windows, Excel, and Terminal this drops to 3700K. How much memory will be free after System 7 is loaded onto a 1 meg machine, btw? Win 3 works best with 2 Meg, which is about what Apple is recommending for System 7 if I remember correctly... > Another gripe is that >it is not compatible with a significant amount of hardware out there for the >ibm world. Depends on how you define "significant." Win 3 works with all common video standards (and will work with the more esoteric ones as long as drivers are provided, which they usually are), almost all common printers (and definitely many more than System 7 will support out of the box), all mice I know of, and all other hardware that is reasonably compatible. There are problems with Win 3 and some 3rd party hard disk partitioning schemes, most of which can be fixed by reformatting with a supported scheme (i.e. DOS's own). >My guess is that system 7 will be well worth the wait, and will >make windows look as archaic as ms-dos. I haven't really fooled around >extensively with windows yet, but it doesn't seem all that great, me being used >to the mac interface. It is, however, a considerable improvement over the old >windows 286... Those of us in Windows-land are awaiting System 7, too, since we don't get TrueType 'till after System 7... Silly marketing agreements... No, Windows 3 does not give you a Mac interface--that'd be pointless since Apple 1) already has one and 2) sues people who copy it. Which is interesting: most people in the Mac world feel that Windows and the Mac are eons apart; is Apple the only entity that sees enough similarity to sue Microsoft over it? >Joel Lingenfelter, Biola University >"I'm just a student so the university speaks for me..." Aaron Wallace
Justin_Randall_Padawer@cup.portal.com (06/12/90)
I personally feel that the term "flame" is overused. Thankyouverymuch. And I ---LOVED--- these first-hand subjective reviews of products that remain unencumbered with high-sounding jargonesque baloney and phony fairness: I want to hear from peoples' subjective gut. So, anybody that dumps on this parade can bite a weenie.
derek@leah.Albany.Edu (Derek L. / MacLover) (06/15/90)
In article <1990Jun11.144945.8191@athena.mit.edu> tmyers@athena.mit.edu (Tracy S Myers) writes: >In article <1990Jun11.021254.14167@agate.berkeley.edu> dankg@typhoon.Berkeley.EDU (Dan KoGai) writes: >>In article <1990Jun10.154243.6742@athena.mit.edu> tmyers@athena.mit.edu (Tracy S Myers) writes: >> >>>Please excuse this garbled message, my news program crashed when >>>I tried to post it. Below is the (hopefully) intended version. >> >> You can easily cancel your message with Captal-C if you are rn >>user. And other newsreaders have capability of canceling article. Even >>though you have none, you can still post in control newsgroup to cancel >>message. > >While I am recovering in the burn ward, I will have lots of time to find out >if I can cancel an article in the situation I was in. I realize that I >probably did not make myself clear. I again apologize for posting my first >message which included only the contents of the article I was submitting a >follow-up to. Here is what happened. I edited my response and tried to send it. As an aside, I have never been able to get rn to successfully cancel one of my postings using 'C'. It claims that I wasn't the author of said article (this, less than five minutes after posting it). Having used Windows 3.0 for about a week, I can say that it's a terrific-looking program. It's very consistent internally (in its interface) and comes with a lot of features and asides not usually provided with an operating system or user environment. However, the only way I can see a user getting any work done by running it on a 33-MHz '386. Perhaps it was the time-slicing that was slowing it down (that feature by itself is "way cool", by the way), but just screen redraw on a VGA monitor took a while on a 20-MHz '386SX. I'm going to try out MS Word For Windows on it this week, same machine; I wonder how it compares to MS Word 5.1 in operation speed... Derek L. -- BITnet: derek@albnyvms | Macintosh Guru / Monty Python fanatic -| InterNet: derek@uacsc1.albany.edu |Consultant & Student Asst.@ SUNY-Albany ---}------------------------------------) <><><>(Why would my boss care?)<><><> -| Fencers love to touch! |"Cinderella man/ Hang on to your plans"
strobl@gmdzi.UUCP (Wolfgang Strobl) (06/15/90)
derek@leah.Albany.Edu (Derek L. / MacLover) writes: > Having used Windows 3.0 for about a week, I can say that it's a >terrific-looking program. It's very consistent internally (in its interface) >and comes with a lot of features and asides not usually provided with an >operating system or user environment. However, the only way I can see a user >getting any work done by running it on a 33-MHz '386. Perhaps it was the >time-slicing that was slowing it down (that feature by itself is "way cool", >by the way), but just screen redraw on a VGA monitor took a while on a 20-MHz >'386SX. I'm going to try out MS Word For Windows on it this week, same >machine; I wonder how it compares to MS Word 5.1 in operation speed... > Derek L. Strange. I have seen and tried it on a 12MHz AT with 1 MByte and found it to be much faster than version 2 and of sufficient speed to run the Write text editor, the notepad editor and the terminal program, all at the same time. The speed increase has nothing to do with video speed, Windows has got faster because the many code reloads which slowed down Windows 2 arent necessary anymore (mostly). Wolfgang Strobl
derek@leah.Albany.Edu (Derek L. / MacLover) (06/16/90)
In article <2672@gmdzi.UUCP> strobl@gmdzi.UUCP (Wolfgang Strobl) writes: >Strange. I have seen and tried it on a 12MHz AT with 1 MByte and found it >to be much faster than version 2 and of sufficient speed to run the >Write text editor, the notepad editor and the terminal program, all at >the same time. The speed increase has nothing to do with video speed, >Windows has got faster because the many code reloads which slowed >down Windows 2 arent necessary anymore (mostly). Oh, no, it's _much_ faster than Windows 2.1, and is certainly a major improvement. I'm far more used to Macs, however, and it simply didn't seem as fast -- although I didn't do any benchmarks; this was just playing with it. I wasn't running Write or Paint or the other programs Windows comes with, either, I was running some regular DOS programs from the command prompt. One thing I did notice was how easy it is to "lose" icons within windows, at the main window level. >Wolfgang Strobl Derek L. -- BITnet: derek@albnyvms | Macintosh Guru / Monty Python fanatic -| InterNet: derek@uacsc1.albany.edu |Consultant & Student Asst.@ SUNY-Albany ---}------------------------------------) <><><>(Why would my boss care?)<><><> -| Fencers love to touch! |"Cinderella man/ Hang on to your plans"