The month of August will be an exciting month for Microsoft as August 24 is supposed to be the magic moment when Windows 95 ships. I predict that it will ship on time, but within 90 days an update disk will be shipped. (Rich on a limb again.)
I have been a beta tester for MS Windows 95 since they called it Chicago. I have had so many new builds of it that I now have a whole bunch of excess 3-1/2" diskettes and CD-ROMs lying around. The latest version I have is probably pretty close to what you all will see on release. It seems to be working quite well on my power machine:
- Pentium 90 with 16 megs RAM
- Diamond Stealth 64 with 2 MB DRAM
- Mag Innovision 17" 1024x768 .26 monitor
- Adaptec 2940 SCSI adapter board
- NEC 3X SCSI CD-ROM
- Iomega SCSI 100 MB external ZIP removable disk drive
- Pro Audio 16 Sound Board
- 2 IDE hard disks (200 MB removable, 540 fixed)
Rich, tell me seriously. Do you think I should upgrade to Windows 95?
1. If you're a pioneer and always need to be on the "bleeding edge" of technology, and your computer is a 486 with a minimum of 8 megs of RAM and 100 MB available on your hard disk, yes!
2. If you consider yourself a novice and have only figured out how to use the programs that you already have installed, and you're not really comfortable using Windows 3.1, no!
3. If you're running a business and you have not had the time to test all your mission critical applications on a separate machine, no!
4. If you are running a computer that is already overloaded with IRQ and address space problems then you might improve your lot by upgrading to Windows 95. (That's a wishy-washy yes.) There is always the possibility that Windows 95 with its Plug-N-Play will be able to set up your system better than you did. The problem with many of the existing convoluted systems is that the existing devices and boards are not Plug-N-Play--each has a jumper or switch on the board that has to be changed. This is not in the spirit of Plug-N-Play.
5. In its present form, I do not recommend the home user
upgrade to Windows 95 until later in the year or early next
year. Let all the pioneers get the arrows in their chests first.
<G>
Remember the saying that has been around since the days of DOS 1.0: Wait for release X.1 before you buy. Windows 3.0 and DOS 4.0 are just a couple of instances where this really was true. (I am sure that Microsoft will not appreciate my candor.)
All that aside, I am pleased with Windows 95 on my Pentium. It is fast, and I have not had any serious problems with running most programs. I have even run two versions of my DOS-based BBS (PCBoard 15.21) software on the same machine at the same time, one on COM1 and the other on COM2. I can even bring up WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 in another window and print while the BBSes are running. I have had a heck of a time on each re-installation with getting it to recognize my Microsoft bus mouse on IRQ 5. It keeps trying to say it's a PS/2 mouse on IRQ 12, but forcing it to the bus mouse works. I learned quite early not to allow the installation wizard to find and install all the hardware automatically. By telling it that I want to select from the list, it works much better. I probably would have had a lot less aggravation if I did not have so much garbage in my computer.
The interface is much closer to the Apple Macintosh operating system display. I still do many things in DOS, so I have an icon for DOS. I have my system on a Novell NetWare 3.12 system and Windows 95 did all the dirty work to install its drivers properly. It recognized my network adapter card (Intel) and asked me some questions. Logged onto my network and assigned the drives in accordance with my login script for mapping drives. A new feature for CD-ROMs in Windows 95 is the autoplay feature. When you insert a new CD-ROM in your drive, it automatically comes up with a menu for you to select from. Neat and seems to work great. Of course in one build of Windows 95, it thought my D: drive was a CD-ROM. <G> That's fixed now.
In an attempt to be fair to Microsoft, I will say that this is such a drastic change to Windows and they have done a good job on the migration. The latest version even does a save of your old configuration so that if you change your mind, you can restore your hard disk to its prior configuration. Remember that Windows 95 is an operating system, not a program run on top of DOS like Windows 3.1
P.S. I really don't see why all the fuss about the Microsoft Network (MSN). I have been using this on-line service for about 3 months and believe me, it ain't worth it. The chat rooms remind me of early Compuserve CB channels. Lots of drivel and very little substance. It is kludgy, hard to get around, and takes forever to load the software. I don't think you can use it effectively. I would recommend America On-Line, Compuserve, or one of the other services. Of course for straight Internet services, CPCUG's own domain, cpcug.org, is the best investment for your money. Something tells me that some of the other on-line providers are just blowing smoke in the hopes that Microsoft will not ship the MSN software with Windows 95. Personally, I feel that it will be good for those other providers as many Windows 95 purchasers will drop MSN in favor of one of the others after they have tried MSN for a short introductory time. Come on now, AOL, let's get your software for Windows 95. <G> I really do need some more spare 3 1/2" disks.
Hint number 1: As always, make a backup of your critical data so
that you will not cry if it crashes and burns.
While you're at it, please make a good bootable system disk for your A: drive with all the drivers for your tape backup system and such. Copy to this disk the DOS programs FDISK.EXE and FORMAT.COM, along with any special device drivers so that you can start over with your hard disk. Having a tape backup is kind of worthless unless you have the tape restore software available on the A: drive for a complete restore.
I have heard users giving the advice to copy your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files to your A: drive. Don't do this without putting them in a sub-directory on your A: drive, as you might end up with problems when your CONFIG.SYS refers to files on the C: drive that are no longer there. One additional thing that you might be aware of is that if you format system diskettes from Windows 95, they will not work correctly when you attempt to boot someone else's machine with that disk.
To make a bootable system disk for your A: drive, do the following before you attempt an upgrade!
Place a floppy disk in your A: drive and from the C: prompt, enter
format a: /s
The /S tells format to install the system files on the disk.
When it is finished, enter
This should now give you a good bootable system disk for your A: drive. If you have tape backup software, copy it to your A: drive so that you can use its restore feature to recover from a disaster. Good luck.
Rich Schinnell is retired from the US Navy and Vitro Corporation and now does a little consulting on the side to keep him out of trouble. He is the president of CPCUG, and visits the CPCUG offices on a random basis to assist the staff. Rich can be reached on the Internet at schinnel@cpcug.org or by phone in the evenings at (301) 949-9292.
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