From: rusbasan@sage.cc.purdue.edu (Bob Rusbasan)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Windows 3.1 Review
Date: 7 Apr 92 22:40:41 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Purdue University Computing Center


I'm surprised no on has reviewed Windows 3.1 yet.  Since I've had time 
to play with it for a while, I thought I'd do the honors...

Windows 3.1 is not without its share of problems, and since many of 
them came up during or soon after the installation, I thought I'd 
discuss them first.

I have been using Windows 3.0 for about a year, so I installed Windows 
3.1 on top of it.  Although the install program is smarter than most 
(it does delete many unneeded files), it still left quite a bit of 
junk on my hard drive.  If you're installing Windows 3.1 over 3.0, the 
first thing I recommend that you do is to bring up the File Manager 
and list your /windows and /windows/system directories by date.  If a 
file does not have the current date or the same date as the rest of 
the 3.1 files, find out what it is so you can decide whether or not to 
keep it.  In particular, old drivers are good candidates for deletion.

The installation program seems to assume that any drivers you have 
installed should stay on your hard disk and remain the installed 
drivers.  While this may be a good idea for special cases, for most 
people it will just leave them with obscelete video and mouse drivers.  
In my case, it left me with an old VGA driver and an old Logitech 
mouse driver.  I experienced a few glitches and couldn't get the mouse 
to work in Windowed DOS programs.  After I realized what was going on, 
I changed to the new drivers (they even include the new 6.02 Logitech 
DOS driver).  I also added a line to my system.ini file as the 
readme.wri file instructed.  I suggest anyone having problems go to 
the setup program and reinstall all of their drivers.

After hearing about all of the sound capabilities of Windows 3.1, I 
was disappointed when all of the beeps were still coming out of the 
speaker.  After fumbling around in the Control Panel a bit, I realized 
that I had to install the sound drivers myself.  After bragging long 
and loudly about how much better the sound support is in 3.1, you'd 
think MS would do a simple check to see if you have a sound card and 
confirm it or let you pick a new one during the installation, like 
they do with your mouse, keyboard, and video.

While the whole procedure for installing drivers has been vastly 
improved (you won't have to get a new copy of setup.inf for every new 
driver to install them from within Windows), I still don't understand 
why Microsoft doesn't treat driver installation uniformly.  For video 
and the mouse, you use Setup.  For printers, you use the Printer icon 
in Control Panel.  For other drivers, you use the Drivers icon in 
Control Panel.  At the very least, they should allow you to open up 
the printer and video/mouse driver dialog boxes from the Drivers 
portion of Control Panel so you can install any driver from one place.

The color scheme for Windows has been changed to one that I personally 
find much more pleasing, but when you install over 3.0 it doesn't 
change it.  To get the new color scheme, go to the Colors icon in 
Control Panel.  The "default" colors will be selected.  Choose 
something else, and then choose "default" again to get the new colors 
(you can cancel this if you want to keep 3.0's colors).

There have been a number of negative posts about Windows 3.1.  I was 
about ready to add my voice when I first installed it, but after 
making these tweaks my mind was completely changed.  Windows 3.1 is 
*great*.

It is incredibly faster than 3.0.  Almost without exception, 
everything is *significantly* faster.  Windows 3.1 is a joy to run.  
Everything is so fast and smooth compared to 3.0...

I tried all kinds of programs, and I just kept minimizing them and 
opening new programs.  I never ran out of system resources, and things 
never really slowed down, even though I was well into my swap file and 
had literally dozens of programs open (on a 4M 386sx-20).  Task 
switching is also improved.  Alt-Tab switching now brings up a little 
window with the name and icon of the program you'd switch to.  This 
happens *instantly*.  It is a very fast way to switch among programs.  
When you switch from a DOS program to a Windows program, there is no 
more painfully slow redrawing -- everything SLAPS onto the screen 
almost instantly.  DOS programs run better too.  You can use the mouse 
with windowed programs, which works very nicely.  The text cursor 
doesn't even appear -- you just use the Windows pointer.  This makes 
DOS programs seem almost like Windows programs, especially if they're 
menu-based.

Although the appearance hasn't been drastically changed, things do 
look a little better.  All of the icons have been redrawn, and more 
information is shown in the File Manager and other programs.

Opening files is a lot faster and easier with the new common dialog 
boxes.  The File Manager is great.  I used to always have DOS command 
lines running, but now the FM has made a believer out of me.  Shortly 
after 3.0 came out, MS said something like, "The Windows File Manager 
has killed the C: prompt."  If they were to make that statement today, 
it wouldn't be something to laugh at, like it was at the time they 
first made it.  The FM is much easier to use, and it, like almost 
everything, is much faster.  I deleted one directory containing 
hundreds of files and other subdirectories, and it took just a few 
seconds at the most.  Moving files is also faster.  The FM is more 
powerful, especially with the applets included with Windows (and other 
programs that understand OLE, I presume).  Dragging something from the 
File Manager and dropping onto a program almost always does something 
meaningful.  Double-clicking on a file associated with an app that can 
work with multiple files opens a new Windows, unlike 3.0, which would 
try to start a new copy.  This is much more convenient if you see a 
file that you'd like to look at while in the FM.  You don't have to go 
into Word or whatever and renavigate the directory tree from its "open 
file" dialog box.

The Program Manager is basically the same, with a few new additions.  
It also is dramatically faster; it probably illustrates the speed 
improvement better than any other program.  I just opened and closed 
groups for a few minutes, not believe how fast they'd snap open and 
shut.  PM is also no longer a resource hog.  In fact, opening program 
groups does not seem to affect resources at all.  There are a few new 
options, such as the ability to specify start-up directories for other 
programs.  Picking icons is also much easier, since you now scroll 
through a Windows that shows four or five at a time (no more, "Whoops!  
Damn, I missed the one I wanted!").

The sound features are neat.  It's almost fun to try to scroll a 
document too far or do something else wrong because you usually get 
this really cool sound that makes you want to keep hitting Page-Down 
or whatever.  The only complaint I have is that some of the sounds 
have this ticking noise, but I think that's a problem with my old 
Soundblaster rather than Windows.  By the way, Windows supports any 
Soundblaster -- they just *recommend* that you look into getting the 
2.0 version of the BIOS, which apparently fixes some of the noise 
problems.  They have different drivers for different BIOS levels.  I 
imagine any Adlib would work as well.

There is a MIDI player, so you can play MIDI files with a regular SB 
or Adlib.  They recorder program plays samples and lets you record 
your own.  You can paste them as objects into other programs.

Windows 3.1 is, from what I've experienced so far, much more stable 
than 3.0.  And no, it's not just because they "renamed away" UAE's -- 
besides, to be fair to MS, since you can recover from almost any error 
now, they were correct in renaming them since they are no longer 
"unrecoverable."  I haven't experienced any errors at all since I 
changed to the new mouse and video drivers, and most of the time I've 
been playing around a lot, so I've had dozens of applications open.

Windows 3.0 really made it clear that it was a non-preemptive 
environment (I'd say "operating system," but then a bunch of anal-
retentive weenies with nothing better to do would freak out, change 
the subject to "Windoze an OS?  (Was: Windows 3.1 Review)",  crosspost 
it to the OS/2 groups, and flame away).  While 3.1 is still non-
preemptive, it almost *feels* preemptive.  It is much faster and 
smoother.  Task switching has been improved in this regard too.  For 
example, the system doesn't stop while you're alt-tabbing through 
apps.  When opening or saving a file, in Windows 3.0 you had to sit 
there and watch, but in 3.1 you can just alt-tab into something else 
most of the time.  You hardly ever seen an hourglass.   There are all 
kinds of little changes that just give the whole environment a much, 
much better feel that's hard to put into words, but once you 
experience it, you'll know what I'm talking about.

SmartDrive has many more features and may account for much of the 
improvement in speed.  Since it works better and caches floppies, and 
since Windows doesn't have to switch in and out of protected mode to 
access disks, there is a big speed boost.

Compatibility:  I've only had a few very minor problems, and this 
includes working with some of the alleged "casualties" of Windows 3.1 
(see another post by me about this).  Everything I've tried works, and 
only two programs I have have shown any glitches at all, and they were 
very minor things that didn't prevent them from performing their 
function.  Overall, everything works great; in fact, due to the speed 
improvement and other improvements, everything works much *better* 
than it ever did.  

Printing is noticeably faster.  I just have a dot matrix printer, so 
everything I print is sent as a giant bitmap, which was quite slow 
under 3.0.  With 3.1, things go much faster.  The application gives 
you control back much faster, and the printing speed itself is a lot 
better.  Although I haven't worked with it much, Print Manager seems 
to be more flexible.  Win 3.1 also includes many new drivers.  Anyone 
who was disgusted with the drivers Panasonic put out (for one thing, 
they didn't print down the center of the page) will be much happier 
with the new drivers included with 3.1.  And, yes, you can even read 
the help file on the universal driver now.

I'm very impressed with TrueType.  I uninstalled ATM and plan to stick 
with TT unless I have some burning reason to use PostScript fonts (as 
many people do).  TT is faster and the text doesn't flicker as you 
type.  It seems to print a little nicer on my printer also.  As soon 
as there are a lot of TT fonts out there, I'll be happy.

In summary, Windows 3.1 is much better than 3.0.  Along with the major 
changes (like TT), there are many little changes that make it a better 
environment.  It is faster and more robust.  It is more fun, and I'm 
sure it will increase my productivity just as soon as it quits being 
just a little TOO fun for me (the urge to play can be overwhelming).  
It uses memory better, so you can have many more applications open 
than before with much less slowdown (right now I'm using about 4M of 
disk space as memory, and I honestly haven't noticed any slowdown at 
all; under 3.0, switching to another app would start the hard disk 
thrashing and pop up the hated hourglass).  I have not had any 
significant problems (not even with PC Tools, made by Incompatibility, 
Inc.), and it seems to be much more stable than 3.0.

In short, I heartily recommend it.  I am very happy with it.  It is a 
great environment in which to work.  The only glaring defect is the 
lack of a decent file system.  Besides that, I really don't have 
anything to complain about.

-- 
   =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
  / Bob Rusbasan                |       Dance to the tension       \
 /  rusbasan@sage.cc.purdue.edu |        of a world on edge         \
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms