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1995-05-12
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First Experience with Windows 95 John Wunderlin 5/11/95
--------------------------------------------------------
This note represents about 4 hours with the 'final' beta of Windows '95.
All information in here is strictly my opinion, and I've tried to be as
neutral as possible. I've been using Windows and OS/2 for 7 years & am
a member of Team OS/2, not affiliated with IBM, but I have been and
continue to be a strong advocate of OS/2. Having passed the disclaimer,
here's my notes:
Scoring
-------
Excellent: 3
Good: 2
Fair: 1
Bad: 0
Installation: Pretty good, intelligent operation. Some things were
clunky- had to leave windows to perform a disk repair operation & had to
reboot 3 times in order to get the entire installation to complete.
Total install time was about an hour. I had to install to a different
drive because my C: was too small (40 meg), and it didn't migrate my
applications over, which surprised me. It should have been able to do
that, at least! It did identify most of my hardware, but of course
since you have to install from Windows, it already knows what you're
using... Loved the time zone setting! (you just have to see that!).
Score: W95: 2 Warp: 1
General usability: Fairly easy, although I think the OS/2 metaphor is
better. The installation didn't install all the bells & whistles that I
would have liked. Had to manually enable the sound card and install
multimedia extensions separately (another reboot required). Help engine
is somewhat improved (thank god!), but the way they did it is really
wierd. Rather than just allowing a straight search, they indexed every
word in the database! Seems kinda backwards to me... I like the bubble
help everywhere- very useful. I miss the file manager, however. They
basically took it apart and moved its functions to different areas of
the operating system. What's left is ok, but I liked everything in one
place. Screen refreshes were FASTTTTTTTTTT! I couldn't get my dos
software to run, because it didn't provide enough base memory. The help
engine is really nice- it allows you to do a search on something, then
launch the program that the help references directly. Nice touch.
Overall, I think Windows 3.1 users are going to have a tough time
initially with the new interface. Since it looks a lot like OS/2, it
wasn't much of a leap for me.
Score: W95: 2 Warp: 2
Multitasking: Much improved over Windows 3.1, but still a far cry from
OS/2. I was able to open up a couple dozen windows with lots of file
objects on the screen, but then I tried to open the readme file & it
said it didn't have enough memory. I started the vampire video & moved
to different windows & the sound would skip- real annoying. Everytime
the CD-Rom started, the mouse would lock up for several seconds. So
much for the theory of multiple input queues.
Score: W95: 1 Warp: 3-
Foundation and Stability: Again much improved from Windows 3.1, but
about 20% of the time, a program would either give me an error or fail
to start altogether. None of the really important things were problems,
but some of the utility programs wouldn't go. System resources drained
at a slightly slower rate than 3.1, but it was still there, and once
drained, it didn't seem to like to restart programs (memory leak?). If
dos isn't there, then why did all of those LH statements show up when it
boots?
Score: W95: 1 Warp: 3
Glitz and marketing: This is a pretty user interface. All of the icons
are polished and the window animations are really cool. The vampire
video is a great addition and will make for some nice demos, as long as
you don't try to do anything else while you run the video.
Score: W95: 3 Warp: 1
Included software: What software? I had a tough time finding anything
other than the new file manager and control panel that I could test
with. I didn't feel like logging into the Big Brother network right
away. The notepad was one of the utility programs that I couldn't get
to work. I ended up reinstalling some of my windows software so I could
play around with some things. (yes, Grandma & Me still works).
Score: W95: 0 Warp: 3
Final thoughts: This OS has the potential to be a really good stop-gap
measure to hold users off until they can fine-tune and pretty up Windows
NT. It allows better multitasking and has some nice new features that
makes it a lot more usable than Windows 3.1. On the other hand, if you
are a power user and desire a stable, flexible, multitasking system and
the ability to multitask dos software, Warp blows it out of the water.
Again, this is just my first thoughts with the new OS. I will be using
it off and on until August. I suspect they may be able to release this
in August, but I'll bet they can't iron out all the problems I saw by
then. Be prepared for a lot of fixpacks to roll out in the mean time.
Total: W95: 9, OS/2: 13 (better than I expected, but it's not Warp yet)