From: chawdry@cis.ohio-state.edu (rehan nisar chawdry)
Subject: Win 3.1 not THAT great.
Originator: chawdry@chippewa.cis.ohio-state.edu
Organization: The Ohio State University, Department of Computer and Information Science
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 20:46:45 GMT

Yesterday, I went into our local Micro Center where they had all the
Windows 3.1 boxes lying around.  I anxiously hopped over to the nearest 
computer and with great pleasure noticed that Win 3.1 had been installed.
So, I booted it up....the screen came up and my first thought was "This doesn't
look much different from Win 3.0".  I randomly opened and closed windows just
to test the speed of the graphic driver.  Someone previosly had posted that
on his Paradise board, Win 3.1 was MUCH, MUCH faster than 3.1.  In all 
objectivity, Win 3.1 graphic speed was about the SAME as Win 3.0 on my non-
coprocessed, interlaced, Tseng ET4000 card with the newest drivers ( I assume
that the board on the computer I tested on was a Paradise...the slowest garphic
cards I've seen).  This was at 1024x768x16 resolution.  This computer was a
486-33 4 megs RAM.  My computer with the Tseng card is a 386DX-20 with 3 megs
RAM.

Pressing onward, I double clicked on the new File Manager. Prettier and faster
than the old file manager, but functionality is the same.  Why oh why can't we
have an integrated file system with icons as in Program Manager?  Much to say,
File Manager also didn't impress me.  Until Microsoft combines Filemanger and
Program Manager (which in my opinion serves no purpose except solely to run
programs) I will continue to bitch.  Oh, I don't own a Mac, just use one 
occasionally, if you were wondering.

Then I saw something with multimedia, I double clicked on it and bam! it jumped
to DOS, the words IBM display technology flashed on the familiar screen and
up popped up Grolier's encylopedia of animals.  On a 486-33 with a Sony CD-ROM
the animation was JUMPY.  Sound was excellent, but the graphics were jumpy.
After resetting the computer and using DOS alone,everything was running 
smoothly.  I didn't fiddle with the Win 3.1 DOS settings so I may be off the 
ball on this one.

After my initial observations, I didn't think Window 3.1 was that great.  
The functionality was the same.  Sure it gave you some more memory here and
there and was faster in many areas, but pure functionality had not changed.
It's the same way I felt about DOS 5.  Everybody raved about how I needed to
get it and how it was absolutely fantastic.  But, after getting it, I soon 
enough realized that it was still DOS.  Same parallelism with this version
of Windows.  It seems like everybody is oohed and aahed so much by small 
advances in speed and memory usage that they forget that when considering 
Windows in a bigger respect it's not all that great.  On a 286 system, I 
would recommend Windows 3.1 (tough one though because Geoworks is spades ahead
of Windows in speed, but it just doesn't support anything, including DOS apps).
On a 386, you have to be all but blind not to consider (read CONSIDER)
OS/2 2.0.  I'm no fan of IBM and have never bought an IBM product, but for $49
I couldn't resist.  Plus, even if I don't want it, Windows 3.1 and its apps
will be able to run on the same screen as OS/2 (by June 92, update is free).
My all-time favorite program Ami Pro will be converted into a multithreaded,
multitasking monster word processing app.  Stacker will be available soon, and
so will a 32-bit SVGA graphic engine.  I just hope OS/2 is closer to my
expectations than Windows 3.1 was.

		-- Rehan --