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Technical News Association 004
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| Technical News Association |
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| #5 |
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| MS DOS 6.0 |
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| Typed by Oreo |
| From PC Magazine |
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"DOS 6"
Imagine a software package that doubles the size of your hard disk, gives your applications lots more RAM, and protects your data with a handful of basic utilities for less than $100. Sounds too good to be true? Microsoft is betting it sounds good enough to buy. It hopes the combination of built-in-compression and memory optimization will make MS-DOS 6 every bit as popular as MS-DOS 5 has become.
In PC software history, the success of DOS 5 is second only to Windows 3.1. But Microsoft hasn't always been so adept at getting its operating system customers to upgrade, and not every DOS upgrade has fared so well in the marketplace. MS-DOS 4.01 flopped when it debuted in Novermber of 1988. Microsoft blamed IBM's buggy 4.0 release for the weak reception, but when it came right down to it, users just didn't find DOS 4's new features--a shell interface, expanded-memory device drivers, and support for large hard disk partitions--enticing enough to bother upgrading. The experience taught Microsoft some valuable lessons about what it takes to make an upgrade succeed: compelling features, exhaustive testing, and retail availability are the keys, the company conclude.
By its June 1991 introduction, MS-DOS 5 had been tested by 7,500 users, more than any other software package to date. With it, Microsoft made a version of DOS available through the retail channel for the fisrt time. And most importantly, MS-DOS 5 included memory management that was so much better than earlier flavors of DOS that users felt they had to have it.
Now Microsoft is using the same strategy with MS-DOS 6. The company has already launched an extensive beta test program: Starting in August 1992 with just 2,000 users, the number will grow to 10,000 by the product's release later this winter. And the upgrade will be available as a retail package for under $100.
Compression may be the most compelling new feature in MS-DOS 6. The growing populartiy of products such as PKZip/PKUnzip,Stacker,and SuperStor indicates that users are increasingly less worried about losing data through compression. Info-Corp estimates that only one percent of the installed base uses compression today, but it expects that number to grow significantly. Among power users, compression is already well established: In a recent Pc Magnet survey, nearly 70 percent of the 1,139 respondents said they use at least one compression product.
Like the standalone compression products, MS-DOS 6 uses an algorithm based on the Lempel-Ziv technique that gets rid of redundancy by tokenizing recurring data patterns. The MS-DOS 6 algorithm should double the capacity of most hard disks.
"Memory management sold MS-DOS 5," says MS-DOS 6 product manager Richard Freedman,"and users asked us to make it even better." In DOS 6, a full-blown optimizer automatically sets up memory. The optimizer isn't just easier to use, it's also more powerful. Freedman says most users can expect it to free up approximately 150-200K of RAM for applications, compared with roughly 100K with MS-DOS 5. For any user, that's a lot, and for many it will be enough. But power users will still want to buy add-on products to get such as Quarterdeck's Stealth mode, which lets TSRs take advantage of the memory areas usually used by the ROM BIOS.
In case the two big features of the new version don't win you over, Microsoft has hedged its bets by integrating some basic utilites into the package, most of which are subsets of popular programs. DOS 6 includes backup (read backup, this time), virus protection, undelete (enhanced), and file transfer. But utilites developers need not fear: MS-DOS 6 will still leave power users hungry for more advanced features.
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