Windows.doc July 1991 Something About Windows Microsoft originally started the long haul towards a usable GUI way back in 1983 or so, when even 256k of RAM was a luxury, hard disks were confined to mainframes. Due to the limited nature of the PCs available, Microsoft shot themselves in the foot rather, and Windows flopped. Mind you, even the Apple GUI was apparently painfully slow and very disk-swap intensive, so perhaps Microsoft didn't do too badly after all? Windows 1.0 appeared in 1985 (preceded by GEM, which still exists in some PC applications, and on the Atari ST) to a rapturous lack of enthusiasm! Still bogged down by the hardware needed to really get a multi-tasking system going, Windows really needed more memory, and the Lotus-Intel-Microsoft Extended Memory System came to its rescue... Well, actually it benefited everyone who could afford extra RAM, enabling the 640k barrier to be broken by most applications (mind you, even now it is common to have problems with up-to-date PC software that requires up to 480k of base RAM before it will work at all - we have been struggling for ages trying to configure IBM PS/2 model 70s with a network, mainframe terminal emulation and modelling soft- ware. It's a bit like the problem some Amiga software has with CHIP and FAST RAM - sometimes even using FastMemFirst doesn't leave you with enough CHIP! Oh, for a 1 megabyte chip RAM!!!). So, EMS helped Windows to gradually grow in popularity, but it was, and remains, somewhat hamstrung by the fact that it works best with programs specially written for Windows - these make full use of the graphics capability and multi-tasking, but cannot be run from DOS on their own. And regular DOS applications were (and are) a bugger to run under Windows, as they often require full screen rather than a window, and usually don't allow multi-tasking or easy movement between applications from the main screen. Due to the slow take-off of Windows programmers were reluctant to spend time developing (or converting) applications to run under Windows, and the lack of decent programs that took advantage of Windows further slowed down the take-off. And then... in 1987 Windows became two products (just to confuse the already confused PC user!), namely Windows286 and Windows386, designed specifically to run on PCs with 80286 and 80386 processsors respectively. This was due to the ability of a 386 to address all memory available to it, while a 286 was still limited in the way memory could be addressed. Well, more applications were produced, but as the 'normal' character based DOS programs (such as Lotus 123) were improving all the time there was still a good deal of resistance to Windows. The breakthrough came with Windows 3.0, released in 1990, which was hailed by all and sundry, despite a few not insignificant problems, such as the fact that many applications that would work under previous versions of Windows wouldn't work under version 3!!!! (Please Commodore-Amiga, if you ever get round to upgrading AmigaDOS/Workbench for the great mass of WB1.3 users, please make it a fully compatable upgrade - there can be nothing more frustrating (and damaging to goodwill and market-share) than having to dump or replace programs just because upgrading causes incompatability) Non-Windows applications are still notoriously difficult to get up and reliably running, and memory management under Windows is probably fine if you are only using Windows applications, but using non-Windows applications can be a real headache (hence the popularity of DesqView by QuarterDeck, an alternative multi- tasking environment that is supposed to be able to run non-Windows and now Windows itself too!!!) By now (July 1991) it is reckoned that there are over 3 million copies of Windows worldwide, but then virtually every 286 or 386 PC comes bundled with it anyway, so that hardly counts as voluntary purchases by the masses, does it? The hype in the PC world is dreadful, no matter how much fun it is playing with a new toy if it won't run Lotus 123 release 3.1 why make so much fuss? We shall see. I suspect Windows will not go away, so if any of you get a chance, do have a tinker with Windows, if only to find that your favorite application won't run at all!!! Isn't This Windows Thing a Bit Familiar? An Amiga user coming to Windows will find it all very easy to use, except that menus aren't pulled down with the right mouse button (in fact I can't work out what the right button is for - perhaps Microsoft are hoping to woo Apple users who have long had only one button?), and the gadgets are slightly different. For example the close window gadget, normally at the top left on and Amiga is at the top right, and is a down arrow. Confusing at first, but it does fit - the up arrow expands a window to fill the screen. Strictly the down arrow iconises the window, and each closed window appears on the screen at the bottom, with it's name underneath. The use of icons for program selection will seem pretty small to Amiga users, as icons in Windows are limited to only 32 x 32 pixels, but they can look very nice as in VGA mode they can have 16 colours. Although 32 x 32 icons seem small, due to the high resolution of VGA they are generally very clear, but a lot of icons provided with commercial programs have been designed by professional graphic artists and they have come up with some very nice icons. Other features will be familiar too - although the program names are different you will find the equivalent of virtually everything that is on the Amiga Workbench and Extras disks. The text editor is even called Notepad! Windows comes ready equipped with a (to Amigan eyes) primitive paint program (Paintbrush) and a basic but serviceable Wordprocessor, with a nice set of fonts. I get the distinct impression that Microsoft have trawled the best bits from the Apple, Amiga and Unix systems, and I suppose that's what we'd all do, subject to the risk of 'look and feel' lawsuits of course! A key feature of most people's encounters with Windows will be that most corporations will use VGA or better monitors, and so the polished hi-res look will be hard to meet or beat on a CM8833 or equivalent home computing monitor. However, the Amiga can take on all comers, and there are a few tricks up the sleeve of the perceptive PD/Shareware collector that can even impress Windows users. Will Windows Succeed? To be fair to MicroSoft, Windows is excellent in use (apart from trying to get a non-Windows application working!), and I'm sure it marks a revolution in GUIs for the PC world. The earlier versions of Windows failed badly, Presentation Manager is an OS/2-only GUI, and therefore will probably never be seen outside high-spec networking situations, and GEM for the PC faded away into obscure oblivion (it seems to exist only in stand alone DTP applications such as TimeWorks, although I believe that Digital Research do still support GEM and it may be that it is still available?). A pity really - GEM did work very well. There are a number of new GUIs available for PCs, notable among these are Counterpoint and GeoWorks Ensemble, which will enable ordinary MS-DOS programs to run from icons (but not Windows applications). And they don't need a 286 or 386 processor either ... Windows-style for the masses? Actually the progress towards Open Systems via UNIX related GUIs (including NeXT) may yet have a much bigger impact than Windows. Windows still sticks with DOS based systems, and there's a feeling about that DOS (whether Microsoft or Digital Research versions) may not see further versions. Personally I think PCs may not be better merely because they are more powerful, so there ought to be a place for 'primitive' technology like DOS based PCs. But as something like 40% of all new corporate PCs are part of networked and data sharing and graphics based data storage is growing fast, I can see many corporations going for UNIX in a big way. Interesting that Commodore have taken the Amiga into the UNIX world via the A3000/UNIX. The future will be very interesting! \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ End of File