Computer Operating Systems
                                by Duane Bristow
                              The Helping Hand BBS
                                 (606) 387-4002

        You will hear a lot of hype lately about an operating system 
        called Windows due to a massive advertising budget from 
        Microsoft Corporation.  You may also hear of an operating system 
        called OS2 touted by IBM.  Basically these are very complicated 
        systems placed between the user and the CPU which are supposed 
        to make the computer easier to use which they don't.  What they 
        do is make it necessary to have a much faster computer with much 
        more memory to run applications.  They do have a very few 
        advantages in certain applications which involve desktop 
        publishing and preparations of presentation graphics.  In other 
        words, you might want to consider one of these, especially 
        Windows, if you intend to publish a lot of fancy newsletters 
        with a lot of pictures or if you intend to produce computer 
        presentation programs for advertising or public speaking.  Even 
        in these cases, however, I would favor MS-DOS as an operating 
        system for the computer.

        Reasons to use Windows:

            1.  You can create documents rich with fonts, graphics, and 
        more.
            2.  You can run multiple applications at once.
            3.  You can combine applications by sharing information 
        between applications.
            4.  In the future much powerful software will be developed 
        to run in the Windows environment.

        Reasons not to use Windows:

            1.  You will need more memory, more hard disk space and a 
        faster computer to get acceptable performance.
            2.  Windows is slower than DOS.
            3.  You will have to relearn applications because the 
        Windows system is more difficult to learn than good DOS based 
        user interfaces.
            4.  There are more DOS applications available now than 
        windows applications and this will be true for the foreseeable 
        future.
            5.  If you really need to run multiple applications at once 
        a program called DESQview which runs under DOS will provide this 
        ability.  It is simpler and faster than Windows.