Computer Win95

The magic day has come and gone: Aug. 24, have you all bought your Windows 95? Well, I did and I'd like to tell you of my real world experience with this new Microsoft product.

I was on record as saying that I was not going to buy Win95 at its first release because all first release software has bugs in it. However, I went to the launch at the Shangri-La Hotel and caved in to the hype. I was able to upgrade to Win95, as an owner of Windows for Work Groups 3.11, for a mere $125 and I couldn't resist.

I installed it on two computers; one at the office and one at my home. The one at the office is a 486DX2/66 with 8 Mb of RAM and the computer at home is a 486DX4/100 with 12 Mb of RAM. I had minor problems with both machines during installation. The office machine had QEMM and the WordPerfect cache installed (I don't like SMARTDRIVE) and Win95 didn't like either of them. So I disabled both of them and Win95 installed OK, although it took over two hours. The computer at home uses a MS Mouse with "intellipoint", which is multimedia Mouse software that comes with the MS Home Mouse, and Win95 didn't like that. However, it did install without my disabling the Mouse. On this computer, it loaded in just over half an hour.

The things I really like about Win95 are the new interface, which is much smoother, and the multi-tasking, which allows you to run more than one application at the same time.

The thing I don't like about Win95 is that it ate my home computer. Let me explain. I have a four-year old who is computer knowledgeable and in fact learns a lot by playing "games" on the computer. So I bought the Kindergarten CD-ROM from Knowledge Ware (Original Copy) copyrighted dated 1994. When I installed it on the computer, no problems were detected and the kid enjoyed several hours of counting and matching and other fun things wherein youngsters actually are learning. All in all, a nice application for children aged 4-7.

The problem happened when we exited from this game and went back to Win95. The Mouse had disappeared, the sound card was permanently disabled and exit to the DOS prompt was not working. In addition, Word Perfect 6.1 had been running in background while the game was being played and it would not now start (gave me an exception error). I was able to recover the Mouse. But I was not able to get WP going again, nor was I able to exit to the DOS prompt or even boot in DOS mode.

The aggravation was that Win95 comes with an uninstall option that restores your original DOS and Windows for Work Groups and erases itself. As you might guess, this option told me that there was an error and it could not uninstall itself. Even the game that was the catalyst for all this wouldn't run.

I did back up everything and I would have to reformat my hard disk and reload all my applications and data. I should have trusted my instincts and waited for Win96 or 97. I fully intend to return Win95 and get my money back. Now, I have decided to go back to 3.11.

JOHN R. FENTON

Jakarta