From: support@qdeck.com (Technical Support)
Subject: Re: Is Dv/X a Good Thing?
Organization: Quarterdeck Office Systems, Santa Monica CA
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1992 16:56:08 GMT

In article <1992Sep24.162405.1@csc.canterbury.ac.nz> phys169@csc.canterbury.ac.nz writes:
>I'm thinking about getting Desqview/X; we run a mixture of 286's to 486's with
>mainly DR-DOS and often MS-Windows (so we can run Scientific Word). We have
>lots of X-terminals and tend to be using Unix-world stuff more and more, but
>need to keep running a good number of DOS machines for a variety of reasons.
>
>Could somebody please comment on...
>
>(a) Is Dv/X better than MS-Windows? than OS/2?? (I understand it'll depend on
>    all manner of things, and I'm not aiming to start a war, but is it
>    generally recognised as more stable? good value? more efficient? better for
>    working with the Unix world? or is it an also-ran getting squashed out by
>    the big two??)

I would say it depends on how much you use x-applications, and how much
you use windows applications. I prefer DVX, but I'm certainly a biased
observer, because I work for Quarterdeck :-)

If all you use is Windows Apps, with an occasional foray to X, you might
be better suited by a X-windows add-in for MS windows. If you use DOS
applications, especially ones that need/want VCPI (such as AutoCad), I'd
use DVX; you can always run your Windows-specific applications in Windows
underneath DVX. If you are interested in using your DOS and Windows apps
from other X-terminals, you'll definately want DVX.

I can't really comment on OS/2, because I've been unable to get it running
on my machine, due to compatability problems (I have this busmastering
hard disk controller, see...)

>(c) Will it work with DR-DOS and SuperStore's compressed partitions? As far as
>    I know there's nothing like that for OS/2, and Windows sometimes corrupts
>    such drives. 

Sure. I'm using stacker myself, but sstor is fine. You'll want to contact
our tech support department (or write me at support@qdeck.com), because
we have technotes that will help with getting them working properly.
(DVX is fine, but some drive-swapping that the earlier versions of these
disk compression products did blows our automatic optimization process
out of the water, and we need to tweak it a bit to make everything work
smoothly). I havn't seen disk compression for OS/2 myself, but I'm sure
it's on its way...

>(d) To what extent can you run DOS programs on X-terminals? 

DVX can take any Text mode dos program and Microsoft windows, and change
the output from both into X-protocol, thereby allowing them to be displayed
on any X-terminal on the network. DVX is also a full X11R4 X-terminal itself,
and so can display X11R4 apps. What this means is that you can have
Lotus, MS-Windows, and your unix apps displaying on any X-terminal,
all at the same time, transparently. DOS graphics apps (other than
Windows) can only be displayed on the local DVX machine's display however.

If you (or anyone who happens to read this) has any questions about
specific pieces of hardware or software and DVX (or DV or QEMM or whatever),
feel free to write me at support@qdeck.com, and I'll see what we know
about it...


-- 
Tom Bortels - Quarterdeck Office Systems - Internet Support 
    For questions or Technical Support, write to support@qdeck.com

Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.desqview,comp.os.os2