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Date:      Mon, 15 Dec 1997 17:40:36 -0800 (PST)
From:      Alex <garbanzo@hooked.net>
To:        Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: DELETING WINDOWS 95, Please Help
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.971215173427.3318A-100000@zippy.dyn.ml.org>
In-Reply-To: <19971216112010.31703@lemis.com>

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On Tue, 16 Dec 1997, Greg Lehey wrote:

> Were you the person complaining about a 3 minute startup?  Does it
> swap a lot during that time?  The other thing we've been seeing is
> that it hangs for about that amount of time doing a name server
> lookup.  In this case, it's completely idle during that period.

I don't know if I was _the_ one, but it did take nearly three minutes to
start up.  If it was a nameserver lookup, the Linux emu code surely needs
some improvment then.  However StarOffice is sluggish period in comparison
to WordPerfect 7.

> I wrote "The Complete FreeBSD" with Emacs and groff.  The thought of
> having to do it with a GUI word processor terrifies me.

Amusingly (and off topic) enough the Spice Girls scare Marylin Manson
*grin*.

> > Either way, WP 5.1 was one of the best written programs I've ever used.
> > It was blazingly fast (on a 486 none the less), so I wouldn't doubt that a
> > lot of it was written in assembly.  It even came with a little task
> > swapper thing, that while not as powerful as DeskView, it certianly worked
> > nicely and came with a nice bunch of integrated apps (calendar, mini
> > database, spreadsheet, etc..). Those Mormons sure knew how to code DOS
> > apps back then ;-)
> 
> Heh.  I gave up on WP with version 4.2 because of the number of bugs.
> But don't expect assembler to bring that much performance
> improvement.  I did some tests and found less than 5% CPU time
> improvement over well-written C.  And remember, it ran under DOS, not
> under Windows (didn't it?), so that would make a big difference.

Yes, but it was amazingly fast.  There were also like 7 versions (updates)
of WP 5.1 ending somewhere near 1/1992 (which was fairly bug free).  I
still have 4.2 around here, but only on ~5inch disks.  WP6 for DOS and any
WPWin were slow as heck, so they eventually released WP 5.1+ for DOS.  Its
integrated file manger was nice, somewhat midnight commanderish, and very
versatile.  It ran nicely under windows too (albeit with funky floppy
problems) or on an IBM/PC.  I wonder if it'll run under doscmd or dosemu.

- alex




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