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1988-09-30
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Issue #32 by Steve Gibson
-----------------------------------------------
I N F O W O R L D M A G A Z I N E
TechTalk Column
by
Steven Gibson
-----------------------------------------------
*** Quarterdeck's New DESQview ***
My recent intensive look at the state of the art in MS-/PC-DOS
multitasking environments has made we acutely aware of the many
reasons we're not all using them today! The last generation of
multitaskers were quite frankly, more often than not, more
trouble than they were worth.
They wouldn't coexist with a favored application. They'd take up
gobs of our precious RAM real estate and disk space, then slow
things down in the process. They'd lock-up the system at the
worst possible times, and wouldn't support some favorite piece
of hardware we were in love with. They wouldn't make it easy to
hop between applications, forcing a major change in the way we
operated. They'd demand that we perform major surgery on the
motherboards of our poor machines, or on our software, before
they'd condescend to deliver on their promise. In general they
were mostly just curiosities. A nice place for our computers to
visit... but not a place for them to live.
But while past multitaskers have never achieved best-selling
stature, neither have they gone away. They've always found a
small but fervent crowd of stanch and vocal supporters. Those
few brave souls out there on the "bleeding-edge" of technology
who believed they knew years ago where the world was headed...
and they were right.
Against this background, and wanting so much to find a wonderful
multitasking environment for Steve's Dream Machine, I can't tell
you how excited and delighted I am to be able to bring you the
news of a new multitasking solution which has finally achieved
"Multitasking Critical Mass." To put it simply, the forthcoming
major releases of DESQview version 2.2 and QEMM version 4.2 from
Quarterdeck, together deliver everything I have always wanted
from a multitasking operating environment.
Benefitting from more user-feedback than anyone would ever ask
for, man-years of real-world experience and product development,
as well as some very clever redesigning and optimizing, the new
DESQview with the aid of QEMM, the 80386 memory manager, firmly
crosses the Multitasking Critical Mass threshold. I believe it
has the power to move every serious 286 and 386 user into the
totally addictive world of instantaneous task-switching, screen
windowing, and background processing... all without changing
operating systems, applications software, or our personal work
habits.
DESQview with QEMM now has the four things I consider utterly
imperative in a state-of-the-art multitasker: The ability to
switch between multiple tasks REGARDLESS of the screen mode each
task is in, including the new and quite necessary extended EGA
and VGA high resolutions. Truly efficient background processing,
including the simultaneous use of large communications programs
with large foreground tasks. Small, bordering on minuscule,
reduction in the maximum space available to any program. And the
freedom to shape the overall environment to our liking by
choosing our own disk caching software, TSR utilities, and other
add-ins.
Rather than developing a special new DESQview/386 as was widely
rumored, Quarterdeck chose instead to enhance their two main
products, DESQview and QEMM, improving each independently so
that they could stand alone, while at the same time increasing
each product's awareness of the other for maximum synergism in
an 80386 system.
Though as I write this column I'm still using late-Beta releases
of the new DESQview and QEMM, I'm currently running multiple 592
Kbyte DOS partitions under DOS 3.3 with a 1.3 megabyte extended
memory disk cache and 72K of space still available up in high
memory for other of nifty memory resident goodies. I have
greased-lightening background communications, and the ability to
fire-up multiple 800x600 high resolution Microsoft Windows or
GEM-based applications at a moment's notice while leaving
everything else running smoothly in the background. Better yet,
I can INSTANTLY switch between any two of these running tasks
with just two keypresses any time I want. THIS IS THE WAY
PERSONAL COMPUTING WAS MEANT TO BE!
But those of you who haven't yet moved up from 286's to 386's
are probably saying to yourselves: "Oh sure the new DESQview may
be terrific, but that's only because Steve has this screamingly
fast and expensive 386." Well it's certainly true that the
memory management in a 386 makes many things faster, but a
stripped-down AT with just 1 megabyte of total memory, 640K
conventional and 384K extended, with nothing but a Steve's Dream
Machine Adaptec 2372 RLL 1:1 hard disk controller and an RLL
disk drive can switch between multiple 510K byte DOS partitions
in under 4 seconds. And while this small machine won't run
multiple huge tasks, it will let you give Procomm the 130K it
requires to run happily in the background and still leave more
than 360K free for you to work in.
You can bet we'll be talking more about Desqview in the very
near future. In the mean time keep your eye's out for
Quarterdeck's announcement of version 2.2. OUR WAITING HAS
FINALLY PAID OFF!
-30-
Copyright (c) 1988 by Steven M. Gibson
Irvine, CA 92715 - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This column will appear in Steve's InfoWorld TechTalk column,
The views expressed by the author are his own and do not
necessarily represent the views of the publisher or its agents.