
Been There, Done That    \|/    by James G. Yearwood
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~           Contributing Editor

"What thrills a 'jaded' PC junkie?"

                        GETTING EXCITED AGAIN


   My family got together on the 4th of July for golf, food and fun. We 
all have home PCs, so naturally some of the talk is about computers. 
Even my mother gets in on the act. Mom has used her computer to make 
gift certificates for the grandkids from time to time. One of my 
brothers writes a column for a local newspaper; another uses his for 
client tracking; and a third uses his for a non-profit organization he 
started. They all get excited about what they can do with their 
computers. I try to remember the excitement I felt when I first did some 
of the same things. But that was 15 years ago, or more, and at that time 
most people didn't have the foggiest idea of what I was talking about. 
(Been there! Done that!)

   It got me thinking -- what gets me excited about computers these 
days?

   Hardware always gets me excited. My boss and I joke about my always 
wanting more hardware: color printers, scanners, bigger hard drives, 
faster modems or more memory. At home I am "making do" with a 486DX-50 
with 16 megabytes of memory and 1.4 gigabytes of disk space. This 
computer, as fast as it is, is showing its age. The 32-bit operating 
systems I run are taking their toll in the processor speed department. 
So I look forward to the P6 computers when they come out this fall. My 
first computer had 4K -- yes, 4096 bytes of memory -- and I thought I 
would never fill it up. Now 16MB seems minimal, what with Windows NT 
requiring 12MB just to run. OS/2 Warp does run in 8MB (that's what I 
have on my notebook), but for serious multitasking 16MB or more is 
needed. So my next computer will have 32MB of memory in it.

   Sometimes a new software package can get me excited. That is, until I 
open the box and find 19 floppy disks in it. My wife uses Microsoft 
Office where she works, so I bought it for her to use at home. I'll tell 
you right now -- buy the CD-ROM version! Microsoft Office Professional 
comes on 19 disks. 19 disks! That's three less than OS/2, and it's an 
operating system! Oh well, that's progress. (?)

   One package I'm excited about had only one disk in it. It's System 
Commander from V Communications. What it does with its one disk is allow 
you to boot up to 100 different operation systems on your PC. MS/PC/DR 
DOS, OS/2, Windows NT, Novell, UNIX, Linux, just about any operating 
system written to run on an Intel CPU. With this program I can easily 
select DOS, OS/2 Warp or Windows 95, all of which I have installed on my 
system.

   I was using OS/2's Boot Manager to select what I wanted, but it has 
its limits. Plus, my wife had trouble using it. System Commander is 
unique in that it tracks all the operating system files for you.

   You can install OS/2, Windows 95 and Windows NT into your current DOS 
partition without having one operating system trashing the files of 
another. The manual gives step-by-step procedures for installing new 
operating systems to run under System Commander, and installing System 
Commander for your existing systems. If you are even thinking about 
running two or more different operating systems, get System Commander. 
For $99.95 (I've seen it as low as $70), it will save you a lot of 
headaches. Here's the info on it: "System Commander," V Communications, 
4320 Stevens Creek Blvd., Suite 120, San Jose, CA 95129, voice (408)296-
4224, fax (408)296-4441; $99.95. I know this sounds like a plug for 
System Commander, and you're right! It's the little things like this 
that make my computing life easier.

   Am I excited about the impending release of Windows 95? Yes and no. 
Running the beta copies at home and at work have produced mixed results. 
Windows 95 runs Lotus SmartSuite for Windows 3.1 and my other work-
related applications better than Windows 3.1 does. At home it runs 
everything I can throw at it, Microsoft Office for Windows 3.1, plus 
Doom, Wolfenstein 3-D, QModem Pro (for DOS) and EZ Cosmos, an astronomy 
program, without any major (for a beta release) problems. But (there's 
the 'B' word) Windows 95 beta does not get along with Novell on a 
network. And my wife told me that when she uses Microsoft Excel for 
Windows 3.1 at work for long periods of time under Windows 95, she gets 
an out-of-memory message and has to reboot her system to clean up memory 
problems. I guess that's why Microsoft is releasing Windows 95 versions 
of all its software. If you want it to run right under Windows 95, you 
have to buy the new software.


   What in the world of PCs gets *you* excited? Let the editors at PCM 
know, or e-mail me at: jyearwoo@indy.net or 70243,2776 on CompuServe.

                                 -=*=-

              Jim Yearwood is a prolific reviewer who has
           written numerous reviews for PCM. He lives in 
           Indianapolis and works as a WAN administrator.

-=-------------        -=*=-     -=*=-     -=*=-        -------------=-
