[comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc] Deskview or Windows?

faiman@m.cs.uiuc.edu (09/12/90)

    Would anyone care to send me comments about the pros and cons of
Quarterdeck's Deskview 2.2 vs Microsoft's Windows 3.0 on a 386?

 -- Mike Faiman, Urbana		faiman@cs.uiuc.edu

andy@mks.com (Andy Toy) (09/13/90)

In article <8000080@m.cs.uiuc.edu> faiman@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>    Would anyone care to send me comments about the pros and cons of
>Quarterdeck's Deskview 2.2 vs Microsoft's Windows 3.0 on a 386?

Shouldn't you be comparing Microsoft Windows 3.0 to Quarterdeck
DESQview 2.3.  From the Quarterdeck ads, it appears that DESQview 2.3
can run MS Windows programmes too.
-- 
Andy Toy, Mortice Kern Systems Inc.,       Internet: andy@mks.com
  35 King Street North, Waterloo,       UUCP: uunet!watmath!mks!andy
      Ontario, CANADA N2J 2W9      Phone: 519-884-2251  FAX: 519-884-8861

finfrock@ncis.tis.llnl.gov (Scott Finfrock) (09/14/90)

In article <8000080@m.cs.uiuc.edu> faiman@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>    Would anyone care to send me comments about the pros and cons of
>Quarterdeck's Deskview 2.2 vs Microsoft's Windows 3.0 on a 386?
>
We use Deskview 2.26 on a pair of PS/2 70's.  We bought a copy of
Windows 3.0 (for another machine) and tried it on the 386's.
We didn't like it very well.  It was pretty but it seemed much
harder to set up and use then Deskview.  It could be that it just
has a longer, steeper learning curve but in any event it
exhausted my patience and I kind of gave up on it.  In particular
we had problems running in background and switching between
graphics windows (or for that matter doing anything with
graphics windows).

Windows does have a much more powerful graphical user interface
(icons etc) and in general I think it has a lot of promise but
I think I will wait to see the next version.


-- 

					  -Scott Finfrock-

pnl@hpfinote.HP.COM (Peter Lim) (09/18/90)

> We use Deskview 2.26 on a pair of PS/2 70's.  We bought a copy of
> Windows 3.0 (for another machine) and tried it on the 386's.
> We didn't like it very well.  It was pretty but it seemed much
> harder to set up and use then Deskview.  It could be that it just
>
Where are you from ?  :-). Windows is harder to setup than DesqView ?
Well .... I can only think of one situation where that will be true.
That is if you only run DOS programs and no Windows program. Even
that, given that you have a 386 machine; you should be able to just
run the Windows setup and when that finish, type WIN to start running
Windows.

> has a longer, steeper learning curve but in any event it
> exhausted my patience and I kind of gave up on it.  In particular
>
And Windows have 'steeper learning curve' ? When most Windows program
looks the same ? and you hardly need any manual ?

> we had problems running in background and switching between
> graphics windows (or for that matter doing anything with
> graphics windows).
> 
For simple starting. You could have just double click the 'DOS prompt'
icon and run you DOS program as per normal. And things will run in
background by default (if I remember correctly; or do you have to check
the []Background box ??). To switch around just use ALT-TAB like you
would use ALT-n (a number) in DesqView. What's so hard ?

> Windows does have a much more powerful graphical user interface
> (icons etc) and in general I think it has a lot of promise but
> I think I will wait to see the next version.
> 
The only thing I have against Windows is that a single DOS task running
in a DOS session is a fair bit slower than the same one under DesqView.
But, I've tried two simultaneous tasks (compiling, doing lot's of disk
accesses) running only slightly slower than one of them. For details,
I compiled two copies of GNUPLOT in background under 386 enhanced mode.
Compiling one alone took about 14 minutes. Compiling both of them took
about 16 minutes ! Of cours, compiling one copy under plain DOS took
only about 5 minutes  :-(.

And ... I have lots of RAM --- 10 MB to be precise. And Windows make
good use of them. If you are trying to run Windows with 2 MB of RAM,
it will be a bit embarassing. And DesqView will have the upper hand.
Otherwise, Windows should run very well except for some performance
penalty which I think is a fair price to pay for the convenience of
nice graphics interface. Other than not being able to run most DOS
extender programs, I find Windows runs more DOS program than DesqView 2.26 !
BTW, Windows runs one DOS extender program --- the Zortech C++ compiler.


Regards,                       ## Life is fast enough as it is ........
Peter Lim.                     ## .... DON'T PUSH IT !!          >>>-------,
                               ########################################### :
E-mail:  plim@hpsgwg.HP.COM     Snail-mail:  Hewlett Packard Singapore,    :
Tel:     (065)-279-2289                      (ICDS, ICS)                   |
Telnet:        520-2289                      1150 Depot Road,           __\@/__
  ... also at: pnl@hpfipnl.HP.COM            Singapore   0410.           SPLAT !


#include <standard_disclaimer.hpp>

finfrock@ncis.tis.llnl.gov (Scott Finfrock) (09/21/90)

In article <35010016@hpfinote.HP.COM> pnl@hpfinote.HP.COM (Peter Lim) writes:
>> We use Deskview 2.26 on a pair of PS/2 70's.  We bought a copy of
>> Windows 3.0 (for another machine) and tried it on the 386's.
>> We didn't like it very well.  It was pretty but it seemed much
>> harder to set up and use then Deskview.  It could be that it just
>>
>Where are you from ?  :-). Windows is harder to setup than DesqView ?
>Well .... I can only think of one situation where that will be true.
>That is if you only run DOS programs and no Windows program. Even
>that, given that you have a 386 machine; you should be able to just
>run the Windows setup and when that finish, type WIN to start running
>Windows.
>
[various belittlements of my problems deleted]

Well this is kind of the boonies but I'm not totally incompetent :-)

Your argument seems to be that you just set up the code, run it
and it works.  Well the problem is it didn't work.  Now thats not
to terrible in itself, deskview isn't all that easy to get right
either.  The real problem was that we couldn't figure out whether
the problems came from the way we had it setup or the way we were
trying to use it.  As a result we couldn't get it to do what we wanted.

Let me be more specific about what we did.  We ran three tests
on both windows and desqview:

1. Go to DOS, run as per normal
2. Set up 3 windows, Wordperfect, Lotus, and a database, have
	at least one executing continously (say, an onscreen clock), 
	and switch back and forth between the three.
3. Set up 3 windows, each running a graphics program.

Results:
Desqview
1.  No problem
2.  No problem, clock continued to be updated even when that
	 window was not the active one.
3.  No problem.  All three windows updated the screen, albeit  slowly.

Windows 3.0
1.  No problem here either.
2.  Windows initiated ok but clock did not update when window wasn't
	 active.  Had real problems switching between windows.  Got 
	 intermittent error messages that said window could not be activated
	 for some reason (I don't recall the exact wording) but the
	 message was ambigous and the manual was no help.  We played around
	 with this a lot and eventually made some progress but we never
	 really understood what windows was expecting us to do here.
3.  Windows just plain refused to do this.  It would not open more
	 than one graphics window.


To reiterate I had no problem executing windows, it was running
multiple programs under windows that I had trouble with and after all
that is the whole point, I don't need windows just to go to DOS.

I have no doubt that most (all?) of the problems I encountered
were problems with me, not with the code.  The issue IMHO is
ease of use, not functionality.

As a final note I spent about half a day with both codes.  That
was enough time for me to feel completely confident with desqview
but after the same period of time there was no way I could have
used windows effectively.


-- 

					  -Scott Finfrock-

pnl@hpfinote.HP.COM (Peter Lim) (09/24/90)

> Let me be more specific about what we did.  We ran three tests
> on both windows and desqview:
> 
> 1. Go to DOS, run as per normal
> 2. Set up 3 windows, Wordperfect, Lotus, and a database, have
> 	at least one executing continously (say, an onscreen clock), 
> 	and switch back and forth between the three.
> 3. Set up 3 windows, each running a graphics program.
> 
> Results:
> Desqview
> 1.  No problem
> 2.  No problem, clock continued to be updated even when that
> 	 window was not the active one.
> 3.  No problem.  All three windows updated the screen, albeit  slowly.
> 
> Windows 3.0
> 1.  No problem here either.
> 2.  Windows initiated ok but clock did not update when window wasn't
> 	 active.  Had real problems switching between windows.  Got 
> 	 intermittent error messages that said window could not be activated
> 	 for some reason (I don't recall the exact wording) but the
> 	 message was ambigous and the manual was no help.  We played around
> 	 with this a lot and eventually made some progress but we never
> 	 really understood what windows was expecting us to do here.
> 3.  Windows just plain refused to do this.  It would not open more
> 	 than one graphics window.
> 
> 
Now we are talking  :-). Which clock program are you using ? The one
that comes with Windows ? or a DOS breed ? In any case, even the one
that comes with Windows doesn't always update on the dot. Windows is
still essentially non-preamptive multi-tasking. Will do preamptive
multi-tasking for DOS programs if run in enhanced mode on a 386. A
DOS breed clock will probably die a miserable death.

As for 3. I can't remember I've try this one yet. I've tried opening
graphics window with 1024 x 768 resolution and it works fine. Will
try out soon.

Note that Windows 3.0 will refuse to run any graphics program with
resolution > EGA in a window. So, you might need to switch to full
screen mode.


Regards,                       ## Life is fast enough as it is ........
Peter Lim.                     ## .... DON'T PUSH IT !!          >>>-------,
                               ########################################### :
E-mail:  plim@hpsgwg.HP.COM     Snail-mail:  Hewlett Packard Singapore,    :
Tel:     (065)-279-2289                      (ICDS, ICS)                   |
Telnet:        520-2289                      1150 Depot Road,           __\@/__
  ... also at: pnl@hpfipnl.HP.COM            Singapore   0410.           SPLAT !


#include <standard_disclaimer.hpp>

allanon@ozdaltx.UUCP (:) (09/24/90)

  I recently finished writing an article on DesqView 386 Vs Windows 3.0 to 
be released in the upcoming issue of Information Age.

  To put it is simple summary.  I find DesqView better if :

1. You are running DOS programs most of the time
2. You are using a laptop.      
3. You do not have a lot of RAM but wants to multitask DOS programs
4. You like the Manifest program from QuarterDeck
5. You don't have a high resolution graphics card
6. You do cut-and-paste between DOS programs a lot.


  You use Windows 3.0 

1. You have more than 2 Megabytes of RAM
2. You like the Windows version of Solitaire
3. You are an EGA card and above 
4. You want to run Windows Specific programs such as Excel or Word for Win.
5. You like the Graphics User Interface using a pointing device (Mouse/Tball)

-- 
V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-Kenneth C.P. Leung-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V-V
Information Specialist             | Staff Writer
Sweda Group Inc.                   | Information Age  Magazine
8404 Esters Blvd. Irving TX 75063  | 4507 W. Pioneer Drv. #910 Irving TX 75061