With all due respect, I must disagree with the main point in your
discussion.  I used DOS for years.  I loved it.  About a year ago, I became
interested in the web and in doing things that I could not do in DOS
because they required multitasking.  I bought Windows 3.11 and WE1.5.  I
live in White Oak.  Now for those of you unfamiliar with Texas, that's a
really small town in the piney woods country of East Texas.  We lacked any
kind of computer training classes, so I determined that I would have to
learn about this operating system myself.  I obtained copies of the
operating manuals from RFB&D and used the wonderful tutorial provided with
WinEyes by GW Micro.  It took me about a week to become comfortable with
the system.
When I started, I, honestly thought I'd be reverting to DOS for a number of
functions such as word processing and number crunching.  That was certainly
true at first, because, for one thing, I was more familiar with the DOS
commands than I was to the windows interface.
AS time went on, however, that changed and I found myself using DOS less
and less.  I now use it for one function only and that's using Scandisk to
repair and check my hard drives.  Unfortunately, I don't have a windows
equivalent for it.
I'm not trying to be a tecky here.  I'm just saying that we can use the
windows interface effectively and profitably.
Right now, I have windows open to at least three things--a text editor,
(I'm reading a class assignment, Netscape, I'm using a realaudio file to
watch the University of Texas commit suicide in its game with OSU, and,
RealAudio.
Despite my love for DOS, we all know I couldn't do this in DOS.
Multi-tasking like that isn't available there.
I also use windows now for file management functions.  It's just so much
easier if I'm deleting or moving a large number of files, to do it with the
windows file management utilities where I can move or delete or copy files
in blocks.
As to word processing, well, I like WordPerfect 6.1 because I can move
blocks of text arround a lot quicker and more easily in it than I ever
could in DOS.  As a writer of graduate level papers, (I think that's the
principal occupation of a grad student) I have to quote lavishly.  Windows
makes this easier because I'm not completely limited to WordPerfect for the
source.  I can use notepad or a spreadsheet or the web itself and simply
drop the text into WordPerfect.
Windows has enabled me to become much more productive and less frustrated
than I ever could have been or ever was with DOS.  I think it's a much more
user friendly operating system and these ideas of the unreachability of the
Graphics interface never bothered me.
While I respect your opinions on these questions, I would urge you to
reconsider them.  Whether any of us like it or not, DOS is gone.  New
programs, New applications, and, God forbid, even modifications of older
stuff are becoming more and more unavailable to DOS users.  If we are going
to be able to use this new stuff, we've got to become familiar with the
platform that runs it.  That's windows.
Don Steelman


IF EVERYONE LIT JUST ONE LITTLE CANDLE,
WHAT A BRIGHT WORLD IT WOULD BE.