Wiindows 95 - Reviewed
by Josh Turiel
Recently, BNUG was sent a review copy of Windows 95, and after some deliberation, Macintosh user Josh (that's me) wound up with the task of installing and configuring the new OS. I stuck my biases on the shelf (even though I've used Windows 3.1 before) and went to work.
The test platform was a AMD 486/100 (AMI BIOS), that I built from a motherboard I picked up at Computer Connections in Westwood. I outfitted it with a generic Trident 9440AGI VESA video card, a 4-port EIDE controller (from a computer flea market), and a NE2000 clone card, attached a 700 meg hard drive, and an IDE CD-ROM, installed DOS 6, Windows 3.11, and went to work.
For starters, I'll suggest that it may be worth it to you to install a CD-ROM drive before trying an installation. A lot of software is shipped that way, anyhow, plus Windows 95 takes up 13 diskettes (in a non-standard format called DMF). Installation is much easier from CD-ROM. Though I had both available, I did an install from the CD-ROM vesion for this review, and the basic install went pretty well. I elected to install everything except The Microsoft Network. Windows 95 was able to detect my LAN adapter and EIDE card without a problem. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the OS supported my Trident card for basic SVGA right out of the box - as I had trouble using it with other operating systems (both NT and Linux/XFree86 3.1). Total installation time took a little less than an hour.
After the basic installation, I threw 95 its first curveball in an attempt to kill it. I installed an Adaptec 1522 into the computer, and attached my spare SCSI hard drive to the Adaptec card. After I powered back up, Windows went through the boot process and then, after I logged in, I ran the 'Add Hardware Wizard'. I let it autodetect the card. It asked me a couple of 'are you sure' type questions and then whirred away off the CD. Windows 95 then copied several files and rebooted itself. Suddenly, I had another drive! I was quite impressed with that ability to auto-install a legacy BIOS card.
After the basic setup, I tried to connect to Bigbox, my NT server. There, I ran into the first of two problems that I had, both network-related. The auto-install had mistakenly detected that my NE2000 was at interrupt 3 (I actually had it at 10). I reassigned it to the correct value (and setup TCP/IP while I was at it). After rebooting, I tried again. Still no connection. I then, after poking around a little farther, found a setting for NT related connections. Checking it off allowed me to connect and find the NT domain. No problem. The connection worked well, though the process was a little non-intuitive.
After I figured out the networking issue, I then browsed the CD-ROM for goodies. I found a driver specifically for my Trident card. Cool! I installed the driver, and now, suddenly, I had truecolor support. Then it was time to get down to business. I took a couple of applications that I had (OK, two games and one application, after all, I am a Mac user first), and installed them. First on the list was DeScribe 5.0. No problem. It installed the Windows 95 version. After verifying that it worked, I then installed a serious application. Doom 2. And, in a major surprise, it worked just fine, right away. I couldn't detect any degradation in performance between it between pure DOS and Windows 95, either. Seriously, the reason I start my compatibility testing with a game is the same reason that Flight Simulator used to be the benchmark of PC compatibility. High-performance games make more demands on a system than most applications, and they usually break more programming rules. So if your Doom II runs, chances are Excel will run, too. The other issue in game testing is graphics perfomance. Windows 95, unlike Windows NT, allows applications to write directly to video. Performance is far better (as is compatability with legacy apps) as a result, though a badly-behaved application will be more likely to cause a fault that brings down the system. Being designed for the mainstream market, I see this as an acceptable tradeoff.
I tested networking by installing a full suite of 3rd party tools (Netscape Navigator, Free Agent, and Eudora), and connecting the system to both a Windows NT Server and the Internet. I did not test SLIP or PPP connectivity, as I have a full-time connection, but there are reported to be problems with some 3rd party WINSOCK stacks. If you use one, check with your vendor for Windows 95 compatibility. One interesting note: I managed to crash Netscape 1.2 on this system. Crashing Netscape is not that hard to do, and on Windows 3.x I can easily bring down the whole house of cards that is a 16-bit OS down. Windows 95 terminated the application gracefully (displaying a window with debugging information), and allowed me to continue operating. I had no further difficulties and was able to relaunch Netscape and begin a new session. On the Mac, a successful termination would have been a sign from the gods to restart quickly, as TCP/IP applications on the Mac leave the system in a precarious state if they crash. Score one for Windows 95.
Generally, performance seemed snappier than my previous experiences with Windows 3.x. The response of the system was quicker to most input or actions, and the video clips that are bundled on the CD ('Buddy Holly' by Weezer being the standout) play back at impressive speed. Microsoft has done a very good job tuning Windows for performance, the OS blazes with 16 megabytes of RAM, and does not degrade that noticeably with 8 megabytes instead. Enough parts of Windows are now 32-bit that base DOS RAM is relatively untouched, and large DOS apps (games, mostly) can load easily within Windows' DOS subsystem. This is good, as rebooting in DOS mode is a little awkward. In an interesting sidenote to the performance issue, I converted the Weezer video clip that I mentioned above from AVI format to QuickTIme format and played it back on two different Macs, a Quadra 660AV (68040, 50 Mhz) and a Power Macintosh 7200/90 (a Power PC 601 system). The 486 could hold a somewhat faster frame rate than the Quadra could, despite the Quadra's faster SCSI drive. I took this as a demonstration to of Windows 95's ability to prevent system overhead from interfering with raw performance. Frankly, I expected the Quadra's playback performance to be better than the 486, given its optimization for video. I was pleased by the results I got from the 486. As I expected, the Power Mac blew both systems away. It would have been nice to have a Pentium-based system available to try benchmarking this with, too, but my wife would have shot me if I bought one.
In summary: since I am a Mac user by trade, I did not have a lot of Windows apps handy with which to test Windows 95. However, since I have a couple of PC's at home, I do have some apps (like I mentioned above), and a lot of older, legacy DOS apps (like Professional Write and Grandview), which all worked fine. Networking is much improved, and for NetWare users, the new, 32-bit clients for NetWare are a big improvement. Provided that you have 8 megabytes of RAM, I really can't see any reason to avoid upgrading. If you are in a corporate environment, evaluate the NT alternative carefully, but you should probably start planning for a 95 transition. Given that software is never perfect, Windows 95 certainly seems to be a more stable, intuitive, and robust platform than legacy Windows 3.x. Given the proper planning, I think it'll be a plus for users, and after deployment a net plus for system managers, too. Microsoft has done a very good job of making sure that Windows 95 would be a strong, compatible product. If you are using off-the-shelf applications, I'd expect to be successful from the get-go. Windows 95, in a nutshell, is the place to be if you have a 486 and 8 megs of RAM. Regardless of what anyone thinks of Microsoft, Apple, OS/2, or Bill Gates and his dream house, Windows 95 is a solid product.