Re: 701c and Win 95

[Randy Whittle <whittle@usc.edu>]

At 12:07 AM 8/29/96 -0400, Bill Bryan wrote:
>My thanks also to Randy for his detailed review of the 560.  I think the
>701c is a super little machine.  I have been running win 3.11 and I'm happy
>to say EVERYTHING works.  I have been entertaining the thought of switching
>to Win 95.  The thought of spending hours getting everything to work again
>is frightening.  I was surprised to read that Randy was unable to use his IR
>port under 95.  I use mine with a HP 5P laser which has a built-in IR port.
>This combo under Win 3.11 works perfectly and is fairly snappy.  I would
>hate to give up this no wires hook-up.  I would like to hear from other
>701c/Win 95 users about problems that they have been unable to fix.  Perhaps
>through this thread unfixable problems will turn out to be useable features...

        No doubt, by now you've looked over my post on the "701 & IR" and
seen that it does indeed work in DOS or a DOS Window under Win 95 with no
problem at all.  For that matter, I vaguely remember using it with Procom
Plus & my HP 100LX some months ago and it worked OK (but slowly--so I used a
cable & things went quicker).

        My main issue appears to be LapLink for Win 95, I suppose.

        By the way, if you do plan to make the jump to Win 95 from Win
3.x--don't worry about it.

        First of all, you can install in a seperate directory (to preserve
your Win 3.11 setup) so you need not "destroy" your old windows and you can
boot to your previous version of DOS & run Windows 3.11 quite easily (just
push the F8 key when it says "Windows 95 loading").  Secod

        Secondly, Win 95 has 701-native drivers.  It runs on the 701 like it
was made specifically to run on it (with the possible exception of the IR
port--but as I said, that's likely a LapLink software problem--Win 95 lists
the port just fine and says everything is working fine with no conflicts!).
Plug & Play & all that jazz.

        As a matter of fact, the 701 was my "trainer" machine for loading
up, trying, & evaluating Win 95.  After having been burned (IMO) trying new
OS's so early (I never did get along with OS/2, though I desperately wanted
to...tried every version from 1.3 through 2.1 and never was happy with the
results.  By the time 3.0 came out, I gave up and decided it wasn't worth
it), I was in NO hurry at all to move to Win 95.  I figured everyone else
could do all that late beta testing & I'd upgrade a year later.

        I've been very surprised.

        I didn't have it on my 701 for long before I took the plunge & put
it on my Desktop too.  Its remarkably stable & decent, especially in
comparison to previous Windows incarnations.  It even gets a fair amount of
use by my die-hard OS/2-cult-leader brother (some of you "Team OS/2"
followers from way back may remember the name David Whittle), who
reluctantly admits that Win 95 is "Pretty Good".

        Should you decide to "take the plunge", I don't think you'll regret
it too much.  As I said, if it makes you more comfortable, just install in
its own directory and keep the old Windows on there too (I kept Win 3.1 on
my 701C for months--took it off only a couple weeks ago when I realized I
hadn't used it since that first week or so of having Win 95 on the machine
and I was never going to use it--Win 3.1--again!  But you know--you always
want it there "just in case".  Back it up to your Zip drive or something
(seems like everyone has a Zip these days)).

-------
Randy Whittle		rwhittle@usa.net
USC Graduate School of Business    http://www-scf.usc.edu/~whittle