
  The Following Article does not necessarily represent the views of
  InterNational Online Magazine or it's staff.


Bits Bytes & Words
By Sam Watson           My House BBS Inc.     <708>739-9355

DOS

As of the first of April Microsoft Corp. has released DOS 6.0. The
question is, will it have the same success that the recent release 
of DOS 5.0 had? I am sure that Bill Gates and Microsoft want it to
be a success. After all, if it is a flop (DOS 4.0 was) it will be 
both nonprofitable and could hurt Microsoft's reputation. Their 
marketing ideas have set the pace with an introductory price of
$49.95. This price will go up to $129.95 on May 31,1993. So if you 
are interested go out and get your copy of DOS 6.0 as soon as possible.

Why should you go out and get that new copy of DOS? First if you are 
running an older version of DOS such as DOS 3.0 to DOS 4.2 then you are 
a prime target for the upgrade. You will get all the upgrades that are 
in DOS 5.0 and DOS 6.0. This includes what I consider some of the best 
of the new commands like HELP and DOSKEY. But, you will also receive a 
utility in DOS 6.0 called DoubleSpace. If you are operating an older 
system and short on disk space this is a godsend. It is very similar to 
some of the disk compression programs that do an automatic compression 
of disk files as they are saved to disk and uncompress these files when 
they are read from the disk. This is an excellent way to almost double 
the space on your disk drive unless you operate with a lot of compressed 
files (ZIP - ARC - PAK -etc.) on your disk. Files that are already 
compressed will only be slightly reduced in size and it is rumored that 
some may take up additional space. Another excellent program that can 
be found on DOS 6.0 is MemMaker. This dandy program is used to optimize 
the use of memory by changing the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files. This 
is somewhat like what is done with programs like QEMM and 386Max. In 
addition to optimizing the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files you can 
single step through them or bypass them entirely by the use of function 
keys on Bootup.

What is in the future? Well, this is the last version of DOS as we know it.
What is now referred to as CHICAGO in Microsoft is really DOS 7. However, 
It is a 32 bit operating system. That means that all you with 8088/86 or 
80286 systems will either have to upgrade or this is the end of the road. 
The only salvation is if DRDOS (Digital Research DOS) chooses to pick up 
the gauntlet and continue in the old tradition of DOS. It would be unlikely 
that DR will do this. DR has never been a successful marketing agent in the 
area of personal computers and they have been left promoting unsuccessful 
products in the past. CHICAGO  will be the gap between Windows NT and the 
old DOS. However it will be completely independent of the DOS that we now 
have and know. It is possible that there will be a version with Graphical 
Interface and without the Graphical Interface for those that prefer the 
old look of the command line. Microsoft is making an effort to keep the 
memory requirements of CHICAGO around 4M. This is because the new Windows 
NT will need 12M of memory minimum and 16M is recommended. There is another
operating system on Microsoft's drawing boards that is destined to replace 
CHICAGO. It is called CAIRO and that is about all that is known about it.

                          Sam Watson
