From: Jeremy_Reimer@mindlink.bc.ca (Jeremy Reimer)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
Subject: PC-MODEM column #3
Date: 10 Sep 92 07:18:50 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

Note to readers:  This is the third in a series of monthly
columns about the IBM PC world, in the style of the PC
MAGAZINE columnists.  Done on a whim, and totally
freelance, this article should be taken at face value.
Comments, criticisms etc. welcome.


Back issues?  Well, there are only two so far, if anyone wants them
I'll e-mail you a copy!

==========================================================================
PC-MODEM MAGAZINE Vol 0 Issue 2                                August 1992
==========================================================================
 ___________
|   .-=-.   |                    _     Jeremy
|  /=-=-=\  |                   | \  _  . _  _  _  __
| |_-== -_| |                   |_/ /_\ | |\/| /_\ | \
| | o   o | |                   | \ \_  | |  | \_  |
| `|  /  |' |
|  | -_- |  |                   ----------------------
|   -___-   |
|   |   |   |
|_-- \_ _/--|         THE DEARTH OF GOOD WINDOWS COMM SOFTWARE
|      \ \  |         ========================================
`-----------'

        Recently, like many other hapless PC users, I decided it would
be a good idea to make Windows my primary operating environment.  This
decision would not be a happy one.  Gone was the speed and efficiency of
Desqview, here to stay were graphical overembellishment and slow speed.
To some extent the people at Apple are correct; the route to making PC's
easier to use is fraught with downfalls and difficulties.  Of course,
the total cost is much less and the available software much more, so in
the end it is still worth the pain.
        To begin with I added more memory.  Windows crawled along with 2
megs, so I upgraded that to 8 and got a good deal on upgrading my
motherboard to a 386/33 as well.  Most of this was in preparation for
OS/2, which I intend to switch to as soon as I get a larger hard drive,
but it made Windows perk up very noticeably.  With all this extra RAM, I
needed a disk cache.  Smartdrv wasn't, not even in the new version, so I
axed it and installed Hyperdisk.  The speed increase was immediately
noticeable. Windows 3.0 became 3.1, and that too brought a marginal
speed increase, overshadowed by my other upgrades.
        But Windows was still a pain to use.  The minimalist integration
of the File and Program managers was clumsy and idiotic, although at
least the File Manager actually ran at an adequate speed, unlike the one
in 3.0.  But it was unuseable as a real-world file manager.  I am
astounded when Microsoft announces that WinNT will use basically the
same interface as 3.1, and justifies this atrocity by saying "we have to
give the Nortons of the world something to do."  Well, I gave the
Nortons something to do.  I installed Norton Desktop for Windows,
trimmed it down to a useable size, and finally had a decent windowing
operating environment.  I thought.
        But the nightmares were just beginning.  For some reason which
Windows experts still can't explain, my favorite DOS comm program,
Telix, simply won't run in a window in 386 enhanced mode, or indeed any
mode.  I tried numerous PIF file configurations, made sure to use the
command-line switch B to use BIOS for screen writes (not necessary under
Desqview anymore as Telix is DV-aware, but the manual suggests it for
Windows use), checked that my COM ports were defined as Telix wanted
them, but no go.  The thing constantly crashed, and CTRL-ALT-DEL would
attempt to close the window but then would hang the system.
        I refuse to believe this is a problem with me and not Windows.
For one thing, Telix runs fine under Desqview, using the same COM port
and settings, and I can even run Windows in a window under DV at the
same time (it is, however, prone to crashing at the weirdest times,
totally unrelated to Telix, which is why I did not use this setup
permanently)
        I could try another DOS comm program, but I have tried numerous
ones and haven't found any that I like more than Telix.  There was, of
course, another option.  This is a graphical environment, so why not try
some Windows communication applications?  Oh, how little I knew.

  - Unicom, tested 3.0C,E and G

This shareware package caught my eye and I decided to give it a test
drive.  At first it seemed fine, but I almost gave it up permanently
right off the bat.  The shareware nag screens, acceptable at the
beginning of the program, would appear at random intervals while inside
the program, sometimes as often as once every 15 seconds!  There was
also a built-in delay before the nag screens could be cleared, which
presented very interesting online chatting sessions.  I found this
unnaceptable, as the nag screens were hindering my ability to test the
program, the whole point of shareware.  Out the window (literally) it
went.

However, upon learning that the G release had eliminated the nag screens
except for when the program was first loaded, I decided to give it one
more try.  There were a few features which I thought were very well
implemented.  The program apparently uses the Windows 3.1 refined
communications driver, which means that I can type at a normal pace in
Winword while downloading, the whole point of the exercise.  Unicom is
even smart enough to modify its minimized icon to reflect the status of
the download.  Very slick, and also the only program I found that did
this!  All the other packages used the old 3.0 driver, which made
noticeable delays while I was typing.  This should have been enough to
push Unicom over the edge, and it almost did.  But the program fell
short in other respects.

One of the worst features is the massive icon bar at the top of the
screen.  Now, I know there is some unwritten rule that ever since Word,
all Windows software has to have an icon bar of some sort, but these are
badly drawn and hard to figure out.  I ended up simply not using them.

But the worst feature was in the terminal emulation.  Unicom steadfastly
refuses to display colors higher than 8 as they really are, instead it
turns the text bold.  Blinking characters become italic.  Now, I
understand that Windows 1 and 2 had only an 8-colour driver, but come
on!  This is Win 3 we are talking about here!  The bold text is really
hard to look at, and in many of the boards I call, the message editor
uses high-intensity colours that become bold in Unicom, and I couldn't
stand looking at it.  The italic text looks silly and screws up the
alignment of some menus.  There were other problems with the emulation
as well, but they were minor compared to this problem.

Unicom came the closest to being an acceptable Windows comm package, and
if they fix the emulation, I will consider using it.  For now, it is
gone.

  -  Procomm Plus for Windows, tested version 1.0

I can't understand the hoopla behind this package.  So many people raved
about it, and yet it is simply the worst Windows software program I have
ever seen.  Badly written, a bad interface, unacceptable code size, the
list goes on.  It is, however, packed with features and has acceptable
terminal emulation, but that isn't nearly enough to make up for these
deficiencies.

The main problem with Pro+/Win is its size, around 5 megs of code.  This
amazes me.  There are no features in the program that warrant code of
that size.  It is simply sloppily written, and it is extremely slow when
running.  I know, people will say "But Jeremy!  It even has a .GIF
viewer!  Of course it will be large!"  I'm sorry, but the GIF viewer I
use is a mere 73k.  One of the causes of this huge size is the large and
mainly useless help files.  When one hits F1, the Windows help system
loads a bitmapped image of the same menu or dialogue box you were
looking at, and uses the mouse to click on different areas.  The last
thing I want to see is an exact copy of the menu I was looking at,
especially considering the amount of disk space these things take up.
The little help balloons that appear when you click on the mouse button
are no help at all, they merely state the obvious.  This is trash.

But size alone doesn't begin to describe the awfullness of this program.
The interface is ridiculous.  The dialing directory has a whole slew of
buttons on the bottom, which usually won't respond if you are editing a
part of the directory.  Even editing the directory makes little sense.
You click once and the field you are looking at becomes a 3-D grey box.
You have to click again to edit the field.  Useless.

The fonts used in the main communication window are too small, making
the default window a tiny box in the middle of a vast blank screen.  You
can change the font size and type, but none of the included fonts were
satisfactory to me, and sometimes the window will revert to its awful
defaults.

Changing default colours is a two-step process involving wading through
tons of poorly-designed dialogue boxes and menus.  There are two
separate colour change dialogues, and they work completely differently
from one another.  To change the colours in the communication screen and
the background surrounding the same screen requires going through both
dialogues.  Crap.

There are many other poorly-implemented features in the program, but I
won't list them all.  One of the few good areas is the terminal
emulation; this is the only program I found to actually translate
high-intensity and blinking attributes faithfully.  However, the speed
of the text inside the communication window is noticeably slower than
any of the other programs.  Sorry, but this isn't the ideal Windows comm
package everyone was expecting from Datastorm.  It's too bad.

 - WinQVT, tested version ?

This was just a small shareware DEC VT terminal emulator, but it did
have Zmodem and other file transfer protocols, so I decided to give it a
try.  I didn't expect much, and wasn't disappointed.  The emulations
were consistantly off the mark, the IBM character sets weren't always
translated faithfully, and every time a window popped up over the
communication screen it turned all the text behind that window to drab
white on black.  It also lacked a dialing directory.  Goodbye!

 - Crosstalk for Windows, tested version 1.2

This was the first "big-name" Windows comm package, and many people
raved about it.  I remember the original Crosstalk for DOS as being
loved by many people, yet it was extremely difficult to use.  This
problem seems to have been translated faithfully into the Windows
version.

I had problems installing the beast.  The program kept asking for Disk 1
of 1, yet I had it in drive B:.  Eventually I got it working, and noted
that it too mangled my WIN.INI file.  It's curious to note that
Microsoft has stated firmly that any Win 3.x software that modifies
WIN.INI will NOT run under NT.  Almost every package that I've tested
under Windows seems to do exactly that, even Winword.  One more reason
to doubt NT's useability when they finally do release the monster.

The terminal emulation in this package was awful, but I was beginning to
get used to this.  It had no "ANSI" or "ANSI-BBS" but it did have an
"IBM-PC" emulation which was close, but did not translate BBS menus
faithfully.  The DEC VT emulations I did not get a chance to test, but
there were not many of them.

This was another #*!*!!! program to use only 8 colours in the
communication window.  It has the option of setting "Bold" and
"Blinking" attributes to one of these eight colours, as well as the
default background and foreground.  This usually ends up mangling BBS
menus so that one or more colours are invisible.  Pathetic.

The dialing directory was extremely weird.  Each phone number had to be
saved as a separate file, and the dialing directory ended up being like
an actual directory of these files!  The menus are cryptic, with New and
Open in the File Menu referring to these dialing directory files, yet
dialing was accomplished in the Actions menu.  This is so far from the
simplicity of Telix that it leaves one gaping.

One really annoying thing about Xtalk/Win was that you couldn't
auto-redial and then minimize to do something else, unless you were
listening to the modem carrier.  There was no alarm or anything else
that would go off when you connected, although disconnecting produced
the standard Windows beep (well, actually on my system it is Michael
Palin saying "Stopit!" but I digress).  Mind you, Procomm seemed to blow
the Windows horn whenever anything remotely interesting happened in the
communications window, and sometimes even when it didn't.  I don't know
which extreme is worse.

Another weird thing was that when I didn't double-click on a dialing
entry but selected the Dial button I would sometimes get an Out of
Global Memory error.  Right, with 8 megs and nothing else loaded.
Please.

Windows, shmindows.  Using Windows is an exercise in frustration.  There
is no way that manipulating the DOS box settings in OS/2 can possibly be
as agonizing as getting a simple Windows session going without errors,
crashing, and general mayhem.  It might not be so bad if there were
actually any remotely (get it?) useable windows communication packages
out there,but there aren't, until Unicom fixes its ridiculous 8 colour
emulation.

It is my firm opinion that Microsoft is full of excrement.  As much as I
like some of their products, such as Word for Windows, they obviously
have no idea what they are doing in the operating environment/operating
systems field.  And even Winword is slower and larger than competing
products such as Ami Pro.  What is their excuse?  They *designed*
Windows!  And designed it badly at that.  The experiences I have had
with Windows, and with so much Windows software, leads me to only one
conclusion:  Go OS/2. []

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
PC-MODEM MAGAZINE                                           August 1992
-----------------------------------------------------------------------






--
Jeremy_Reimer@ |"Anti-ninjas were the most feared assassins in the world.
mindlink.bc.ca | Instead of appearing out of thin air, throwing metal stars
---------------| and messing around with bo staffs and numchuks they simply
aka THE JAGUAR!| shot people and then drove everyone mad with pointless
---------------| conspiracy theories for years afterwards."
Stealth Sig#42 |  --From "N-Man #3"