              TOM'S COMPUTER NOTES FOR AUGUST 1991

                          Public Domain
                                                                      1
A LITTLE MORE INFO (maybe more than you want) on GeoWorks. The
new Ver. 1.2 (free to 1.0 registered owners) has a spell checker,
support for 300 additional printers, and built in TETRIS for the
game players GEOS is a program that looks like WINDOWS but runs
on an 8088 (or better) computer. The GEOS ENSEMBLE program has
things like a word processor with quite a few features but is
only 58K in size. The draw program is about 32K. Ver. 1.2 is the
latest GeoWorks and Ver. 2.0 should be out about Jan. 1992.
Version 2.0 will have more capability, such as a spreadsheet.
Then comes Ver. 3.0, a full blown 32 bit operating system which
you are supposed to use (?) as a Novell front end.. Will it all
happen? The company is still a small 75 man operation. Guess we
will have to wait and see.    The companies pitch is: Pay us 1%
of your sales and we will give you a runtime graphics environment
that looks like WINDOWS and that you can run on any computer
anyone owns. The people with just an XT or AT on their desk can
get familiar with a GUI on the cheap. A $100 application ($50
wholesale) costs just 50 cents royalty. And, we at GEOS do all
the work for you on printer drivers and the GUI menu. All this
came to my attention via the America On Line application which
runs under GEOS. It has a nice look and feel to it. But, with
this stuff you are talking only look and feel. No multi-tasking
even if you have a 486. Sure, with a 512K 8086 you don't have the
hardware for any kind of multitasking but you can still run the
snazzy looking GEOS and its programs. As for multitasking on a
computer that isn't a server: Who needs it? Why would you want or
need Word Perfect running in the "background." What's it doing in
the background? Nothing. With GEOS you can shrink Word Perfect to
an icon and it's still there but not actually running. Same thing
you do with Switch-It, Carousel or DOS 5.0's task switcher...
List price for GeoWorks is $199 but CompuServe members can get it
for $79 this month.

MICROSOFT HAD GOOD experience with the Beta testing (7,000
copies) of DOS 5.0 so they are doing the same thing with WINDOWS
3.1. It comes on 7 HD disks. Has a much better "look" to it than
ver. 3.0, plus other enhancements.

MY XT CLONE from MEMOREX came out of the box and was up and
running in 5 minutes. It cost $249. Came with 640K, one 360K
drive and a keyboard. There is a serial port, a printer port, and
video output for both color (CGA) and a mono graphics monitor. I
had to supply my own monitor and cable. Fortunately I had an
amber TAXAN monitor not in use with anything so I plugged it in.
The MEMOREX runs at 4.77 or 10 MHz. It's a slimline with just two
available slots. I stuck a hardcard in it which left one slot but
because of the size of the hardcard I'm only going to be able to
put a short card in the remaining slot. A shorty modem card would
be a good choice. The only problem is the built-in clock-
calendar. I can't use it 'cause there is no software to set it or
pick up the time and date on boot. I need ACER (they built the
thing) software STIME, SDATE and TODAY. All in all, it's a good
backup computer in case your main job goes on the fritz, like

while doing your taxes on April 14th! The 360K drive is a grave
limitation if all your data files are backed up on 720K, 1.2 meg,
etc., disks. Then the backup computers usefulness becomes
something less than useful. The best thing to do is ZIP data          2
files and save them to low capacity disks. I formatted some 360K
disks to 420K with MAXI and ZIPPED all my WORD files which just
happened to come to 410K.

HAVING SOME KIND of weird troubles with your computer? Trashed
directories and wrecked FATs? After many months of problem free
operation all of a sudden something started sending my floppy A:
disks to that big DEL in the sky.... "Round up the usual
suspects" came to mind. Number one suspect is always my cache
program. I REMed that in AUTOEXEC.BAT and all returned to normal
with drive A:, though everything was a little slower overall.
After damage control procedures were taken care of I redid PC-
CACHE with the I/a option (ignore drive A:) and things are fixed
but who knows for how long?

FIFTH GENERATION SYSTEMS sent a nice flyer offering good deals on
their products such as FASTBACK 3.0 and BROOKLYN BRIDGE. They
have a BBS where you can download, ask questions, etc. Or, as
they put it in the flyer "lease [sic] questions." Their 24 hour
seven day a week toll free technical line is their pride & joy.
They say, "Set your alarm one night for 3:00 am and call us. Our
technicians are alert and ready!" The BBS is at (504) 295-3344,
0,8,1 at 300,1200, 2400 baud.

FREE DEMO DISK of Q&A 4.0 by calling 1-800-228-4122 Ext. 102-P

                             THE END
