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WINDOWS.ART
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1994-02-03
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BAUMANN ON WINDOWS
(From the ZITEL Bulletin board)
by Norman Baumann
SW>So, how do you like Windows?
I hate it. I was just getting everything fine-tuned in DOS, and
now it's a whole new ball game. If you're a writer, your main
job is turning out text. Windows offers almost no advantages
there, and some disadvantages.
If somebody is buying a new computer and gets Windows bundled,
fine, but I wouldn't recommend a writer with a well-running DOS
system upgrade.
1. Windows programs take up a lot more room. I bought a 230MB
hard drive, and I was *sure* that would hold me for a while, but
Windows programs are not 1-2 MB like DOS; I keep loading in 5,
6, 10 1.44 MB floppy disks every time I install a major word
processing program. And I can't back them up with my old batch
files. It's a rare Windows program that you can back up on a
single floppy.
2. If you're writing, the text is much harder to read on the
screen in most of the word processing and other programs. The
fonts are designed for both the screen and the printed page, and
as a result the characters are very light and thin on the
screen. Other writers have told me the same thing. The Windows
answer: Buy a new $1,000 monitor.
I can sometimes use the darkest, clearest font, which is called
"System", but that's wider than the standard 80-character font,
so you can't get the entire line on the screen, you can't see
the full directory listing in file managers, etc.
I was just reviewing the Windows version of ZyIndex, a text
search program, and I had that problem. It would find any word
I wanted, and display my files with the text highlited, but
would break the lines at 80 characters, and only display about
70 characters. If I wanted to read the file, I would have to
scroll right and left at each line (with the mouse, not the
keyboard).
3. WYSIWIG graphics and display is impractical if you have a dot
matrix printer like my Panasonic KXP-1124. It's very slow, and
the WYSIWIG fonts are not as easy to read as the native printer
fonts.
4. Many of the best-regarded Windows programs, like PackRat or
WordPerfect for Windows, can't run on standard Windows
computers, but require at least 8 MB RAM to run with reasonable
speed. I know people who have returned WordPerfect for Windows
to Egghead and gotten DOS instead.
On the plus side:
1. I make great use of the task swapping (although there are DOS
programs that would do as good a job). I love to have my
message reader in one window, and my word processor in the other
(I'm not doing that now, because of a conflict between Procomm
and Windows, but when it works it's great). I just looked for
the address of the Legal Tech organizer with my search program,
and pasted it into a fax asking for an advance program.
2. The Common User Access (CUA) keyboard is uniform throughout
all the Windows programs, so I know that I can press Alt-F X to
exit any program, for example.
The Windows programs also have menus, which help you before you
have learned the keystrokes, but of course DOS programs can have
menus as well.
3. It's supposed to be very easy to install Windows programs, so
that you don't have to individually configure the printer
drivers, etc. Of course you have to set up Windows itself, and
learn all about Windows.
4. Also unrelated to Windows per se, there are a lot of cheaper
Windows programs, because they are marketed more competitively
and as mass market programs, like Paradox for Windows. OTOH,
the cheaper programs don't have free support any more.
5. The Windows fans tell me it's very easy to exchange
information among programs, although I haven't tried it. So
there may be benefits to Windows that I'll learn to love in the
future. Every time I interview someone who uses Windows, I ask
them to explain why they like it.
6. The main advantage is that it throws everything into
confusion and provides more work for writers who can help people
straighten it out.
I will probably yield to the temptation to buy XyWrite for
Windows, since XyWrite is my main link to the world, and if
there's even a slight chance that XyWrite for Windows is better,
it's worth the investment of my time. At that time, I'll give
Windows a good, honest try.
-thirty-