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 REVIEW / (NEWICONS)
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   At first glance, by looking at the supplied screen-shot, I was not
extremely impressed.  I said to myself "Oh just another set of icons!"
However, after going through the docs and actually installing the program,
I was quite impressed with the new look and operation.
   The icons look like icons and not like some battle-ship grey sigils,
trying to look real.  Over the past year, I've come to desire icons to look
like icons and not icons looking like the real thing, as many of the icons
out there are slated toward.  If I want the real thing, I'll go open up one
of my real dresser drawers.  Anyway, icons that look like stylized
representations of objects give the Amiga the high-tech appearance it truly
deserves.  Also, all of the icons are identical in size, depth, and feel,
which adds a ferment of precision to the bench.  And, then, there is color.
Not just color!  But COLOR!  With NewIcons I am not restricted to a mere 3
shades of grey, and a light pink thrown in for appeal.  I can have RED,
GREEN, YELLOW, VIOLET, whatever I want (256 whatever I wants with an AGA
machine).  And an icon still looks like an icon!  If I decide to change the
palette or the screen depth, I will not find bright violet colored drawers
jumping off the screen and into my retinas.  The program is intelligent
enough to look at the new palette and assign new colors to the ones that no
longer fit.  You don't even need to reboot to see the new color scheme.
All you have to do is close the window and reopen it for the changes to
take effect.
   As far as speed, the actual drawing of the icons onto the screen takes a
bit longer than usual, but it is tolerable.  I have a 25 megahertz 030
processor; so, a 7 megahertz 68000 may be a bit too slow for the impatient.
I'm not sure though.  This drawing-parameter is an individual taste kind-of
thing.
   The background processes are very system friendly and don't seem to hog
any CPU time that I can detect.  This parameter is important to me, as I
don't like greedy CPU programs, no matter how good they look or work. 
   The other thing that I found great was the addition of new pseudo-icons
for the many kinds of files that are out there.  Opening up a drawer now
gives me an immediate understanding of what kind of files are there and
what they do.  (i.e.  sound files have a different icon from iff's, text
file icons are different from amigaguide file icons, ect)
   I suggest that you try NewIcons.  All in all it is a great new addition
to the Amiga and the Workbench.  And if you really like the icons, Nichola
and Roger have a whole set of NewIcons backdrops to go with those
good-looking icons (available in a separate package).
   Many thanks to the creators of NewIcons, Nichola, Roger, and Philip for
taking my Amiga out of unintelligent grey and into intelligent COLOR!