 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Windows 95 revisited Ash Nallawalla ash@melbpc.org.au |
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Since I last wrote about Microsoft Windows 95 (Win 95) in the August issue I have been using the June Release Beta (Build 490) and finally the released version (Build 950). I have also used the disk version of the latter on a laptop. I refer to the Upgrade package, which I imagine is identical to the full package apart from a routine to check the disk for a prior version of Windows.
Win 95 was launched on 24 August 1995 with all the hype you have seen or read about in almost every news medium. I would not be surprised if the local milk bar begins to sell it next week.
You can find Win 95 (Upgrade edition) for around $135-$159 from most computer outlets. An add-on, Plus! sells for around $69.
For the OS/2 fans
I had some anguished e-mail from OS/2 users who failed to see my comment that there is no technical comparison between OS/2 and Win 95, that is, OS/2 is technically superior but should be compared with Windows NT. My only recommendation was for the personal user to "buy it!" I made the appropriate cautions to corporate users (as did most other reviewers) about the extra hardware cost and training implications.
I have read the IBM document and other arguments as to why OS/2 is better, and while that is nice, it is not particularly useful to me. I write these comments as a reviewer and user, not as the editor of this magazine. For the past six years my employers have made the decision to use Microsoft products and to build products for Windows, not OS/2, so I have had no incentive to seek superior alternatives for home use. My personal needs are limited to word processing, desktop publishing (for PC Update) and communications.
It must frustrate keen OS/2 users to see the Win 95 marketing machine in full flight. Hey, lots of people queued up at midnight to buy their copy. That was crazy, yes, but probably fun for them. Some likened it to a New Year's Eve party atmosphere. It is, after all, "only" an operating system. A few critics have reminded us that it has a lot of 16-bit code and "MS-DOS 7.0" under the bonnet.
Resistance is futile
It annoys me to read comments such as "But do you really need it?" If that were not true for someone, the entire computer industry might as well pack up and go home.
The reality for many of us in the business world is that our essential software will be upgraded and their "long-awaited" features will be available only in the Win 95 version. Sooner or later, we will need to upgrade to Win 95 if only for operational reasons. With a bit of luck, the patches for Win 95 may well replace the 16-bit code and other perceived shortcomings, so I see no problem with waiting until the new year to upgrade if you want to play it safe. A few bugs will be identified over the next few months and patches will be released, just as happens with most other products.
Those of you who attend monthly meetings will remember the frequent show of hands requested by presenters for users of Windows. In the Win 3.0 days it was perhaps around 10 percent; a couple of months ago it was over 90 percent. While some users only need an XT and Wordstar 2.2 under DOS 2.0 and some will use Windows only if their application demands it, that is not relevant to users who need to improve productivity.
People can travel to the outback in a Morris Minor, a Rolls Royce, or a four-wheel drive. Some will take longer to get there; some will get there in style and comfort and some will have the best vehicle for the job, arriving first.
Anyway, I'll proceed to talk about the operating system.
Minimum requirements
The main requirement is to have adequate random access memory (RAM). On a test machine (486DX, 33 MHz), 4 MB RAM made Win 95 unusable. It would load and run, but everything slowed to a crawl owing to the need to use the hard disk as virtual (supplementary) memory. Don't bother attempting to load Win 95 on such a PC. It begins to become usable with 8 MB on a 486/66 PC and is much better with 16 MB. Count on sacrificing at least 100 MB for a good installation. I don't mean the 50 MB or so of basic Windows files, but by the time you install Plus! (an add-on for Win 95), you'll need it. For mail handling, do not bother unless you have 8 MB. You need a graphics subsystem that can display at least 256 colours.
Installation
Get the CD-ROM version. I had to do one diskette installation, but while its 13 disks took ages to load the first time, I didn't install the correct options, so two subsequent reloads took up most of an afternoon. With the CD-ROM version not only is installation quick but you get many more optional files, such as better multimedia help, the Hover game and the text of the Windows Resource Kit.
Dual boot
If you want to run an older version of Windows you will need to perform a "dual boot" installation. This is as simple as choosing a new directory for installing Win 95, for example, C:\WIN95. Once you do this, you can always reach your old DOS/Windows by pressing F4 immediately after the PC has been switched on. If you had a DOS 6.x start-up menu, it will still be available in that mode. If you aren't quick enough, Win 95 will boot up by default. The disadvantage of this is that your old applications will not be moved to the Win 95 environment during the installation and you would need to install them manually. In a networked situation or one that is more than a hobbyist setup, you may want to try a dual boot on one machine before upgrading the whole office.
Packaging
Most software packaging these days takes up more space than the contents require and Win 95 is no exception. It could have come in a slimmer box. By many accounts the 95-page solitary manual is inadequate. Some people say that this made the product cheaper and the savings could be applied towards a third-party manual that suits your level of expertise. Fortunately, the text of the Windows resource Kit comes as an online Help file, and many answers that are not in the main Help file are to be found there. You don't get that on the diskette version. The CD-ROM comes in a cardboard sleeve, not a jewel case.
What's different
The user interface is changed from Win 3.1, for the better. The area previously wasted on "wallpaper" is now the "desktop", where you place your frequently used tools. You now need to think of the documents you will work with rather than the tools you need to manipulate them. This document-centric approach makes it very easy to make a "shortcut" icon for any task and place it on your desktop. A shortcut is actually a tiny link file worth a few bytes that points to the real document. This icon could point a particular forum on the Microsoft Network (MSN) that would otherwise be several menus deep if you went the traditional way; now a mouse click will dial it up for you.
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Start here
The "Start" button in the bottom left of the default Win 95 screen is supposedly the place where all your programs will begin. You click on it; it brings up a menu; as you move your cursor over it, menu elements cascade outwards. Eventually you reach the desired program icon and you are on your way. This can get tedious, so you can make shortcuts on the desktop for frequently used programs.
The Registry
A major departure from the old DOS/Windows is the new database known as the Registry. System and application configuration information that was previously found in .INI files is now found in a file called SYSTEM.DAT. You cannot read or edit this file with a text editor. Old, 16-bit programs will continue to use .INI files and the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files.
The registry becomes very attractive in a network situation when a central server is used to store user profiles. Users can then log on from any physical PC and have all their settings available. Administrators can grant or deny any privileges to users by workgroups, individuals or all users.
16-bit or 32-bit?
Some observers make throwaway remarks about Win 95 having a lot of 16-bit code underneath as if they have made some startling discovery and the unspoken accusation of misleading advertising. Now my programming skills are about six years out of date and I don't pretend to be an expert on this topic, but this is how I see it. A true 32-bit-only operating system could break most of our existing 16-bit software and would be a marketing disaster.
It appears, therefore, that Microsoft has left some 16-bit subsystems in place as a compatibility measure until users have had a chance to upgrade their own software to 32-bit versions. Unfortunately for the users, some programs are written for speed, not future backwards-compatibility. This is done by breaking the rules of addressing the Windows 3.1 Application Programming Interface (API). Graphics performance was often boosted in this manner by bypassing the API and addressing the hardware directly. This will probably fail under Win 95 like my copy of Lotus ScreenCam, which would capture audio but was totally blind to anything on the screen.
A minor problem for some programs is that they were written for Windows NT, which uses the Win32 API, but Win 95 uses only a subset of it, so an NT program will not necessarily work.
Communications support
HyperTerminal by Hilgraeve is supplied instead of the old TERMINAL.EXE and is quite a usable package. You can define an icon for each BBS or service you call, each with its own settings, including speeds up to 115,200 bps. You even get Zmodem, along with Kermit, and a couple of flavours each of Xmodem and Ymodem. Each service can be configured so as to have its own upload and download directories if needed.
Microsoft Exchange is the core of all messaging activities.
You need to have Dial-Up Networking installed (it should have an icon in the
My Computer window) before you can hope to do any Internet work. Setting up a shortcut icon for each Internet provider is easy, but getting the TCP/IP details correct is not intuitive. The only place where you need to enter IP numbers is the DNS field. Once this is achieved, the actual login process is simple but manual. The Plus! package contains a scripting tool, so that even this manual operation can be skipped. I expect that this is one of many areas that will be simplified later.
The Internet Explorer (IE) is a web browser included in Microsoft Plus! or you may already have it if you have chosen Internet Access through MSN. It requires a 256-colour or better video display, at least 8 MB of RAM and a 486 or better CPU.
As Netscape users might know, their cache consists of mysterious file names ending in ".moz", so you have a pleasant surprise in store if you use IE. The cache stores files in their native (.gif,.html, etc) format so you don't need to save files immediately. They are all there.
Networking
Win 95 comes with a built-in Microsoft network (not to be confused with the online service). For most other major brands of network, you get clients or the protocols to interoperate with them. Like so many aspects of Win 95, the list of networking features could fill several pages.
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Plus!
Plus! is a separate add-on for Win 95 and I smell a marketing "strategy" there. If you want what was previously known as Remote Access Services, now Remote Network Access (RNA) and simplified Internet access, then you need Plus! You also get
System Agent, a scheduler that can drive your disk maintenance tools at regular intervals;
Compression Agent, a more efficient disk compression tool compared to DriveSpace that can handle large drives and squeeze more space;
3-D Pinball, a game; and several wallpaper and desktop themes.
I have long abandoned squeezing drives in favour of buying a bigger drive; games and wallpaper don't interest me; schedulers I can pick up elsewhere, say in the new
Norton Navigator. But the Internet tools are worth the price for anyone wishing for easy configuration. Although you can get the supplied
Internet Explorer from the Microsoft web pages and you can configure Dial-Up Networking to achieve your Internet shortcut, Plus! makes it easier.
The Plus! package also provides a simple dial-in capability for your PC by adding this option to your Dial-Up Networking menu. It is extremely lightweight and will not replace full-blown remote access applications.
Better productivity?
You will have your own perception of productivity and I am not sure if I can articulate mine fully. The first impression I had about productivity was the time I will save. The sheer spectre of "Win 95 compatibility" will force many software authors to sharpen up their code and adhere to the API. Many third-party utilities can be safely discarded because Win 95 does the same work without the extra overhead. While I can't tell a 16-bit program from a 32-bit program by looking at one, I know that 32-bit Netscape displays images much faster than the 16-bit one. Part of the delay in viewing a home page is caused by the time taken to expand a compressed GIF image locally. This is faster in the 32-bit version, so the overall process is also faster.
To use my hobby horse, the Internet, I am pleased to be able to do without Trumpet Winsock and use the built-in PPP support, whose dialler includes a call timer for good measure. It comes with useful tools such as ping, telnet, and ftp, so you are not forced to go scrounging for a toolkit of utilities. I don't have to spend time learning third-party products and their authors' version of the perfect user interface. A common user interface has a lot going for it and if the programs mostly come from Microsoft then I expect them to be well-built but probably spartan. Some improvements are seemingly trivial, such as a single-click instead of a double-click, but have you ever watched a beginner trying to master a double-click? Will this mean that it will take longer for someone to get RSI?
In the past, running DOS programs under Windows often required complicated PIF files. While the need hasn't disappeared completely, I rarely need to look at the advanced settings to configure such a program under Win 95.
The object-oriented design of Win 95 simplifies working with configurations. That might not matter to others, but I like being able to reach a dialog box from many places and not having to do it the long-winded "Win 3.1 way." I am using drag-and-drop a lot more than I did before. I like the shortcuts. When I put Win 95 on my laptop and travel to another time zone, I will simply have to click on a map of the world to set the local time, not type it at the DOS prompt.
Easy to use?
Despite the "easy-to-use" hype used by Bill Gates liberally at the launch, I know that many people will have stumbling blocks, mainly because of their inexperience with the mental model used in Win 95. They will take time to work out how something is done in the new version (and then it is definitely easier to use.) I would love to see traffic volume figures for various online services and Microsoft help lines before and after 24 August. I am positive that if Microsoft had involved user groups in some meaningful manner before the launch,
it would not have needed as many temporary staff to man the help lines.
I am taking that up separately.
Bugs and incompatibilities
Of course there are bugs. Occasionally my modem seems to disappear from its port, typically after I have used an old 16-bit program. It takes a reboot to find it again. Sometimes I get a total system crash, but this is no different from Win 3.1 and most of those programs are of that vintage. While it "sees" an NEC CDR-74 CD-ROM drive on another test PC, it has partial blindness in that the drive does not appear in the list of devices and the system runs in a "DOS compatibility mode". Whether the choppy sound from a Sound Blaster 16 is caused by that or through an incorrect buffer setting, many others on CompuServe have reported similar problems. Mind you, many of the problems affecting others have not affected me, and I have seen user comments ranging from the unprintable to the ecstatic.
People who used the beta versions should expect to have more problems than those who didn't, owing to old code that is still on their systems. For example, I could not load Plus! properly and had to go to CompuServe's SETUP95 forum and seek help. I had to uninstall Dial-Up Networking and reinstall it before Plus! would load properly.
In a business context I expect programs involving communications or networking to have problems. At work, our proprietary LANStep network will not work until it is updated. Our ESP cards are still awaiting their new Win 95 drivers. Many modems (from various manufacturers) are not identified automatically. Such flaws are not bugs but the usual situation of one product having to catch up with another. Microsoft has published a long list of programs that will have problems with Win 95.
The Easter egg
Many programs contain hidden routines known as "Easter Eggs" that list the people who helped to produce the program and Microsoft products are no exception. The Win 95 programmers must enjoy inflicting pain upon us for the routine is no longer a simple set of mouse clicks. You will need to use the right mouse button and the exact case for the following. Do not type the quote marks.
- On an unused part of your desktop do a right-click, then select New, then Folder.
- Right-click the folder icon and select Rename. Type in "and now, the moment you've all been waiting for"
- Rename it to "we proudly present for your viewing pleasure"
- Again, rename it to "The Microsoft Windows 95 Product Team!"
- Now, double-click the folder and enjoy the music and credits.
I stand by my previous recommendation that the home and small office user will do well to upgrade to Win 95, given the cautions about the hidden costs of additional hardware and updated software. If you can wait until Christmas, well and good, as I imagine some bug fixes will be out by then. If you were like me, you already have Win 95 and need no convincing.
For the large departments I cannot comment on whether you need to look at NT or OS/2, or whether you can toss out your Netware server. The Microsoft PR machine clearly segregates its Back Office information flow from the rest, and I no longer have my Unisys hat to hear the "dark suit stuff." I know we have several senior Telstra engineers reading this and would welcome an article on how they perceive this NT versus OS/2 business, and where Netware fits into the picture.
Reprinted from the October 1995 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
