2k was better, as XP is burdened to an extent in the direction of the later versions. 2k was almost as good as the version of OS/2 that came out 7 years earlier, and only took 16 times the RAM and HDD.
We like to bash MS, but I think for the average user it has just gotten better and better. I know getting on a wireless network was way easier in Vista than it appeared to be under XP. My roommate and I would go to Panera's to use the WiFi and sometimes he couldn't get on for 15 minutes. I'd try to help but it would be hard to find any of the controls for that other than "connect". Vista had made wireless pretty easy. Win 8 on my new machine has taken that a step for two further, automatically fixing some problems. They just screwed up a perfectly good UI for the stupid tablet look. Why is there no "classic" interface? Is Win 10 more of the same?
-- Rick
On Wed, 9 Mar 2016 23:00:22 -0500, rickman Gave us:
Idiot. It has gotten worse and worse.
The very fact that an idiot like you claims to be intelligent yet trivializes machine security is proof that it is one of the worst things to have ever come down the pipe. It ranks right down there in the sewer with Donald J. Trump.
MS ignored security flaws and that is why we have a such a thing as a virus to start with.
How can you be so utterly clueless?
After reading all the horror stories about Win 9x, I am quite happy that in early 1995 after upgrading the memory to 40 MiB, I choose to install Win NT 3.51 instead of waiting for Win95.
I only had to boot the NT 3.51 three times a year (after Christmas, Eastern and summer holidays when I powered down the system:-).
IMHO NT 3.51 is the best OS Microsoft has ever made. It was nearly as good as some VAX/VMS versions, if you forgot to do the thermal cycling (shutdown, cool for one hour, reboot) one year, postpone to the next year, no problem with OS running one additional year.
I distinctly remember it being called Desqview, with a Q. Not only in John Dvorak's book, but literally on the shelves at Electronic Surplus back when they were in Cleveland. And of course decades old. had a half a mind to bu
rive. So f*ck it.
Everybody knows Gates stole just about everything. The IBM DOS, OS2, had a shell quite like Windows called Presentation Manager.
And there are plenty of computer gurus out there know alot more than Gates, what he knew was how to get paid. The Linux people are not there yet but I think sooner or later they are going to want money. And would you refuse t hem ? People who supply a better product (albeit to advanced users) should do it forever for free ?
This makes me think we might be talking about two different things. This De sqview, I thought came out in the 1980s, way before Win 95. It was on fucki
would be about 25 of them.
I wonder if there some errors in the wiki on it
No, Desqview was more like Windows 3.11 (or even earlier Windows versions that operated in character mode)
Desqview was just DOS multitasking.
No. I was a big fan of Windows 2000 and we ran it for a very long time on the company desktops, it was really stable, but at some point in time in simply lacked the support for technologies introduced into the PC and it was just a pain to get everything working.
Migrating to XP solved a lot of problems. Also introduced Software Restriction Policies, a very important feature that even today is overlooked by lots of system admins. (it saves you from trojan software when properly configured)
Later versions: Vista on the same hardware as XP was just a dog.
7 was supposed to be better but still way too much unnecessary stuff and loading down the PC.From then on it was apparent that Microsoft treats the user as an imbecile.
On Wed, 9 Mar 2016 23:30:13 -0800 (PST), snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com Gave us:
Yes., that is correct. But the GUI version was DesqviewX
Plain Jane Desqview was a TEXT based front end file manager / task switcher for DOS. DesqviewX was an actual preemptive multitasker.
I was simply not paying attention to myself there.
Well, you read about it in a book and saw it at a store. I actually used it on a 40 node TCNS network.
It was actually what took Novell down a notch or two.
The GUI based DesqviewX was on 3.5" 1.44MB floppies. Again you refer to the DOS based task switcher.
He did not steal it. He backed out of his deal with Quarterdeck and caused their downfall as a result.
OS/2 was NOT "the IBM DOS". It was a GUI based desktop workstation OS.
WOW... you should apply for a doctorate in CS history... Not.
Yeah... it is called business.
Seems you are clueless as to how it was and is developed.
Just whom do you think "they" are?
You ain't real bright.
Again you are having trouble. Desqview was a product FAMILY. The remark you made about Win 95 stealing from them is an obvious reference to DesqviewX, NOT the original product without the X.
They BOTH came out before Windows 95.
The original was.
And as I said Desqview was TEXT based and DesqviewX was the one with the actual GUI front end.
On the very page you posted the link to.
On 10 Mar 2016 08:16:08 GMT, Rob Gave us:
No. It was task switching. Big difference.
As usual, you are wrong!
I have seen many Desqview systems running 3 programs in multitasking. The program that was not visible on the screen just continued running.
Of course with the typical DOS user program this was not really useful and to the user it appeared to be task switching, but in the systems that we were running the programs were intercommunicating and could do so all the time, also when not visible.
On 10 Mar 2016 09:14:53 GMT, Rob Gave us:
It seems that you also suffer from the retard on Usenet disease.
And no, I am not wrong.
And I do not care what you think you saw.
Neither do I care what you write.
On 10 Mar 2016 12:28:37 GMT, Rob Gave us:
Your computer science skills rest at nil.
Desqview was NOT a true multitasking DOS front end.
It was. But you were too stupid to notice it.
I wrote a TSR that was loaded in the shared area between the processes (in some upper memory area managed by QEMM) and on a system 3 programs were running at the same time that were communicating via that TSR.
One was a networking program, one a BBS, and one another client application. Users came in on the network, their connections were managed by the networking program, and the data sent/received to the BBS and application via the TSR.
Despite your opinion, this worked perfectly. All the programs were running alternately like on any timesharing system, without anybody touching the keyboard.
This isn't "stupid". It's a missing word.
That word is "preemptive". "It worked perfectly" as cooperative multitasking systems frequently do.
Your TSR probably ran off the timer tick, but beyond that, it was still cooperative. The TSR didn't then have any influence over who ran next ( unless you somehow made provision for that).
Cooperative multitaskers have the advantage of being much more deterministic than preemptive multitaskers. But all "threads" must block in a disciplined amount of time.
-- Les Cargill
On 10 Mar 2016 17:42:00 GMT, Rob Gave us:
It was not, and you were too stupid to know the first thing about it, much less the whys and wherefores. That much is quite obvious.
You want a proof from a group CS person? Ask Mr. Brown. He will concur with my statement.
But such a system is still a true multitasking system! He probably is confused with the earlier Desq and programs like Sidekick.
No, the TSR was called from each application, and had a few buffers inside it where the applications put and retrieved data. The TSR did not do any scheduling, Desqview did that. I wrote one of the applications and it made calls to the task yield primitive in Desqview (int 15h with AX=1000h) when it had nothing to do, but that was only a performance enhancement not a requirement.
I know all about it, I wrote a preemptive multitasking kernel in C in those days, and sure it avoids lots of problems. But Desqview did not work like that, it could run any set of DOS programs.
Desqview hooked the 18Hz interrupt to do scheduling, but of course it did not schedule inside the interrupt handler. MS-DOS was not re-entrant. So scheduling could only be done at the entry/exit into DOS.
Of course it was all very primitive, but not as primitive as MAC OS and DR GEM in those days.
I agree wholeheartedly! I like cooperative better than preemptive, all things being equal.
Maybe.
Ah, okay.
DOS could be switched, you just had to not do that when the DOS Critical Section Flag was set.
-- Les Cargill
Agreed. In fact, I finally gave up OS/2 when 2K came out. The only advantage of XP was dual monitor support (2K required support in the driver) and it wasn't nearly as stable.
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