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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.win3-l
Date:         Sun, 15 Nov 1992 15:41:00 PDT
From:         BARKER@GONZAGA.BITNET
Subject:      Re: The Next Version of Windows for DOS

From: Mike Lieberman <cwmliebe@ANTELOPE.WCC.EDU>

On Sun, 15 Nov 1992 Mike Lielerman wrote:

>The question boils down to just how many MS environments are programmers
>going to be able to support.  The reality is that now you have DOS
>software and you have Windows software.  What you are suggesting is that
>the market will support 1. DOS software, 2. 16-bit WIndows software, 3.
>32-bit Windows software.  Each and every programmer who was intending to
>support the high end WIndows customer would then have to have two products
>for the Windows market, with the 32-bit one supporting features the 16-bit
>one couldn't handle.  Maybe, but I don't think so - it goes against every
>law of marketing I know of.

No question that in the long run the 32-bit standard will win out. But my
point is that over the next 5 to 8 years all three types (i.e. DOS, Win
16, and Win 32) will have to co-exist just they way DOS and Win 16
programs co-exist today. In fact, marketing projections for applications using
one of the operating environments (i.e. DOS, Win 16, Win 32, and NT)
show a gradual decline in DOS apps (less than 20% of the market by 2001),
a early rapid increase in Win 16 apps, a larger but slower increase in Win 32
apps, and a very gradual increase in NT apps (less than 15% of the market by
2001).  So, for the everyday user, there must be some accomodation made to
ensure that old favorites (i.e. DOS and Win 16 apps) and new hot releases
(i.e. Win 32 apps) can be run under the same operating environment.

>Well they've said it many times so I don't understand your suprise. They
>will have a server version supporting multi domain addressing and a
>high-end workstation version capable of peer to peer file sharing. It's
>all in the release DOCs and no secret.  They have also indicated that
>there will be different prices for the two versions, also no big secret.

I stand corrected.  The trades normally refer only to Windows NT as a
single product.  It simply never occured to me that MS planned a separate
server version -- makes sense.  Thanks for shinning a light in my cave
<grin>.

>Nothing for now.  I just suspect that the issues that the button bar
>resolves will be incorporarted in all future releases.  Of course you may
>see a event monitor or a performance monitor or a disk manager, ala NT, in
>the newer DOS based Windows products.  Hard to say right now.

Do you think that the next version of Windows for DOS will be 32-bit based
or just be able utilize the Win-32 subset?  I think the most existing
change planned for Win 3.x is OLE 2.0.  Being able to edit objects without
leaving the document will certainly improve my productivity, but after
seeing the hit OLE 1.0 took on system performance I am a bit afraid of
2.0's resourse demands. One thing is for certain, Win 3.x will require an
386 or better.

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| Don Barker                             ________      |
| Gonzaga University                    |        |\    |
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