Upon opening the OS upgrade, you're presented with an inlay contaning the CD, a brief installation manual and a registration card. No printed manuals for you, it's all on the CD nowadays, both in HTML and PDF format. There are four of these manuals; Workbench, AmigaDos, ARexx and hard drive installation. Be warned though if you print out the PDF file, expect the printouts to run to about 600 pages in total. The brief installation manual is in both English and German and runs through the various installation options. It also explains that some 4x buffered interfaces don't like the new style scsi.device and it details how to revert to the old model.

The installation process for 3.5 is performed in two stages. The pre-installation copies files such as the new icon library and hdwrench library, which removes the 4GB hard drive limit, in eadiness for the full  OS installation. The full installation installs the new OS and gives the first use of the new Installer tool. You can now backtrack through installer scripts though they obviously have to be written to take account of this feature. Older scripts won't suddenly be able to magically go into reverse. Along with this, Installer has gained notification methods. You can now open pictures, play sounds, etc.

The CD-ROM driver system is brought up to date with the addition of the CacheCDFS filing system to replace Commodore's pathetic filing system. PowerPC support is added to the OS in the form of WarpOS. This is now integrated into the OS with a prefs program. The other installation option allows you to create an emergency boot disk in case your hard drive decides to play up.

One of the selling points of the new OS is the fact that it is internet aware. This internet software comes in three parts, two of which are familiar to many Amiga users: Miami and AWeb. Due to some last minute hitch the version of Miami with the OS is a demo version, rather then the promised OEM version. This will be available later via download or magazine coverdisk. Similarly AWeb is a cut down version of the full commercial release. Imagine the AWeb demo minus the nag requesters and you won't be too far off. The final part is an email client imaginatively titled AmigaMail which does the job in an unspectacular manner and certainly doesn't hold a candle to the likes of Yam.

Before anyone starts moaning about the less than fully featured internet software, bear in mind that this upgrade is trying to tread a fine line.
On one hand the software has to be functional enough to be of use, but still making upgrades to the fully featured commercial versions worthwhile.

Another of the headline grabbing upgrades is the new printer device. At last true colour printing is possible from the OS. However if you own anything other a modern Hewlett Packard printer you could well be disappointed. The newer Epson and Canon models are notable by their absence. Apparently these companies were less than forthcoming with information to the OS developers. If you own Turboprint or Studio, there's no need to chuck away those disks just yet. The best way to describe the situation is that these printer software apps and the new OS printing  facilities are mutually beneficial to each other. Each possessing drivers that the other does not. The new device is Turboprint compatible so hopefully Turboprint will benefit from the faster printer device, though I don't have the software to confirm this.

Previously all of the prefs programs were coded using the gadtools library. Although functional gadtools is quite long in the tooth these days,  lacking an object orientated approach. Gadtools has been supplemented by the Reaction GUI system which is essentially a rebadging of the ClassAct GUI scheme. Although nowhere near as configurable as, say MUI, it is still an improvement upon the old system. It should be borne in mind that since Reaction is based upon BOOPSI gadgets, MUI can use these new facilities. There is a rudimentary prefs program supplied to configure, albeit limitedly, the look of the Reaction GUI's.

The other new prefs program is Workbench prefs which allows to set the global stack size, hide bad drives and specify the icon parameters.
These can be set to display NewIcons, Colour icons, or both, along with the pen precision for these.

So if the supposedly headline grabbing features aren't that great, is the OS upgrade worth it? The answer is a very definite yes. The changes in the Workbench GUI are subtle yet significant. The icon handling works much better now. If you drag an icon, it becomes ghosted at parts of the  screen where it can be dropped onto app items. The new icon information requester is an appwindow allowing you to copy icon images via drag and drop. However it's things like clicking on the size information of an icon to recursively calculate the size of drawers that are just so helpful when you get used to them.

Clicking the right mouse button shows the new menu structure. You can now clean up a window by type, size, name, etc. Also there's an auto resize option to resize the active window to fit the icons automatically. These things become so useful and vital for the way that Workbench can be navigated that having them removed would leave you tearing your hair out.
 

Other GUI enhancements include the fact that a dragged icon becomes ghosted when it is over an app window, app icon, or such like. Keyboard  shortcuts have been greatly enhanced with additional shortcuts for some of the various menu items. Also it's now possible to activate icons using only the keyboard. Al

 
Although they don't make the Amiga any faster or easier to use the new icon imagery is a welcome addition. Considering how important first impressions are to attracting people's interests, the new icons are a vital improvement. Matt Chapaut's Glow Icon imagery is used throughout. There can be little doubt that the new icon style is a major improvement  upon the old four colour style icons. In fact in my opinion, they are the  most gorgeous looking icons that the Amiga has ever had. The basic system icons are provided along with many backdrop patterns for various screen sizes and pointer images. The new icon format is not NewIcons,  rather it is compatible with it. A new IconEdit, along with converter scripts on the cd, mean that putting all of your icons into the new format is a  reasonably trivial process. NewIcons can still be used, though they are slower than the new colour icon format so it's worthwhile to convert any NewIcons that you want to keep over to the new format.

 
Another understated, yet potent, improvement is the addition of a Workbench ARexx port. Imagine running a script to tidy up every drawer's icons, resizing the windows and then snapshotting them all while you can go off and have a cup of tea. Or file searching programs opening the windows of any matching files and you begin to get the idea.

A couple of extra tools are included; mounter and edit pad. Mounter is a program to help you attach (software-wise not physically!) things such as removable drives to your computer. Edit pad is the equivalent of note pad for the PC. Functional and a lot nicer than Memacs and Ed, but won't  make Dietmar Elliot have sleepless nights. Gold Ed is still definitely king  of the Amiga text editors.

Along with the basic OS come a host of additional extras. The latest Free version of CyberGraphX along with Picasso 96 and Warp3D are included.  Similarly a load of extra icons, backdrop patterns and pointer images are included to allow you to customise your desktop ever further. A set of  commodities and PowerPC demos are also there to exploit the new 3.5 features.

THE $64000 QUESTION

Well is it worth it? Course it is! The new smoothness of the GUI is  probably the greatest reason to upgrade. Quite simply, Workbench becomes a much more pleasant place to work. The other features such as true colour support for printing, the internet features and the updated cd filing system are nice, but certainly not new to the Amiga. A big  advantage of 3.5 is that it gives developers a standard to aim at: CD drives, fast ram, 020 processors for a start. Trust me after a few days experimenting, you definitely will not want to go back. So open your wallets people and make your Amigas happy. They'll thank you for it.

By Symon Tyrell