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To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (20251)	6/25/1998 8:25:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

Windows 98: $90 Worth of Digital Duct Tape nytimes.com Oh dear. From this account, it again appears that rumors of sucking less may have been greatly exaggerated. What a difference three years make! When Windows 95 finally made its way out the door, the Microsoft Corporation promoted it to the cheeky beat of the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up." The CD-ROM came with hip videos of Edie Brickell and Weezer. Windows 98? Dullsville. Today's official release flaunts the bland slogan, "Works Better, Plays Better." The CD? It comes with a Microsoft commercial appropriately set to a pop adaptation of a theme from Beethoven's Piano Sonata (Op. 13), the "Path‚tique." For all its failings, Windows 95 was in many ways, big and small, a significant improvement over its predecessor, Windows 3.1, particularly in its ability to run multiple programs at once. But when it arrived, one reviewer (this one) described it as "an edifice built of baling wire, chewing gum and prayer." Windows 98 adds duct tape, caulk and pesticide. Think of it as a minimal renovation that spruces up the place a bit, plugs some leaks, exterminates some bugs and adds some new plumbing. The wire, gum and prayer remain. Cheers, Dan.

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (20251)	6/25/1998 3:24:00 PM
From: Andy Thomas	Respond to of 24154

Hi Dan, DR/DOS Win3.1: Yes it was involving win3.1. I remember when one of my superiors told me to keep an eye out for a certain error message that people would get when running DR-DOS. The programmer who'd put the code in was grabbing some byte string out of the DR-DOS kernel, and posting it to the user as part of the error message. From what I gathered of the conversation, the particular programmer involved was simply trying to find out something about DR-DOS, not disable it (and I was asked to report back the contents of the error messages DR-DOS users received and passed to me). I wish I'd paid closer attention to that little incident, considering that it seems to have led to the FTC investigation. win95/osr2/osr2.5/win98: My experience is that, with OSR2 and 2.5, and Win98, you can still put "pause" in the autoexec.bat and drop out into DOS, before ever reaching the GUI. I didn't know of any change between the various flavors of win95 in that regard. What I do know is that, during the development of win95, they put in the single-app dos mode (SADM) which I eschewed because of poor performance - the games ran better in straight dos than SADM. The reason the marketeers at MSFT never elucidated this was - in my opinion - because they're in the process of "dumbing down" the users. Heck, if the users are computer illiterate they won't even consider whether the software is bogus.... sucks less. FWIW Andy