Thank you Wintel!
First there was MS-DOS, a single-task, single-user operation system, requiring just a bunch of memory to work. Then programs began to ask for more, for bigger memory's capacities... and then "Extended" and "Expanded" memory were born... and with them the first problems: programs asked always for a certain amount of "DOS" memory, and that memory was never avaible. In the meanwhile, MS-DOS user began to look around them, keeping on believing they were very lucky, a better "human race", until they saw that on other platforms, Man and Amiga, users ignored what "DOS", "Expanded" and "Extended" memories were, and they also had a good looking working environment, very comfortable and easy to use. MS-DOS users noticed that very often Amiga and Mac users did not know even the classical dos commands like "dir" or "copy" and neither facy "chkdsk" or similar, and that, also, they had file names longer than eight chars, so they didn't have to create strange acronymous for their files to remember what they were: they began to cry, feeling unlucky guys. They called for their mother.
Mother Microsoft came giving them "Windows", rapidly growed up to V3.11, simulating a graphical user interface, but it required at least 4Mb of memory, and the same amount of hard disk virtual memory. As all this was not enougth, program working under "Windows" requiredd for fast machines, and MS-DOS users cryed again, until father Intel gave them the greatest gamble of the century: 80x86 family processors that, once in the market, they became "obsolete" in six months because most recent and expensive versions took their place. With this processors, Intel is still continuing CISC processor family, while all the rest of the world is passing to RISC processors...
In this situation, aunt IBM took the scene, with her true multitasking 32-Bit operating system, the OS/2, but mother Microsoft told her sons not to follow the ugly aunt, becuase her Operating System would require 8Mb of RAM and that it was not all that good. Goofy sons believed their mother another time, and kept frustrating themselves with their "great" 16-Bit machines with Win311. But users became asking for more (even if they were not so smart, they wanted more!). They were seeing Mac and Amiga users playing with their wonderful multimedia programs while they just could use "Word" and "Excel". They wanted more and began to ask for it.
Microsoft has "extended" Windows, creating Win95, a product that, as we have already said into these pages, didn't make a big difference.
Anyway, Win95 and Pentium births gave us something (incredibly!) good: Win95 requires "at least" 16Mb to work and very big hard disks: just Win95 installation takes more than 100Mb of hard disk space!
At the moment, all MS-DOS users want to use or are already using Win95, and are buying new machines or new peripherials for their machines: and among these parts there are RAM expansions and Hard Disk in first place. Result: a drastic decrease of prices of SIMMs and HDs, that are computer components we can use as well.
Thank you Microsoft and Intel users, to be so incompetent and to choose so requiring machines! Thank you Microsoft to fool millions of people around the world: now our Amiga can have more RAM and bigger Hard Disk, even with little money.
Thank you.
Written By: Fabio Rotondo e-mail: fsoft@intercom.it
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