CFOG's PIP, November 1987, Volume 6 No. 1, Whole No. 61, page 9

DOS Doings

by Steve Lucius

Lotus 3
PC Magazine in their October 27th issue on spreadsheets reports that LOTUS 3 will be released in early 1988. Wonder when the first low priced clone of it will be produced?

Minimums for MS-DOS
I would like to echo some of the comments made in the article by Gary Shaner in the September PIP on MS-DOS. If you are planning to use any of the large programs such as LOTUS or DBASE III (or their clones) assume a minimum configuration of 512k of memory and a 10 meg hard disk. Using my system as an example I've got about 900k of files in the Wordstar 4 directory, 500k in the TWIN directory (a LOTUS 1A clone), and 1.1 meg in the RBASE 5 directory for a student copy of RBASE. WordStar can be run on floppies but you have to swap them in and out of the B: drive when using the dictionary or synonym finder. Twin may be possible to run on floppies in that the main program and overlays take up 340k, but the help file won't fit on the same disk. RBASE would be a nightmare to run on floppies as almost everything you do requires a disk operation. The hard drive is almost a necessity. With the wealth of software available for memory resident utilities 512 and preferably 640k of memory is needed.

WS4 Comments:
One thing I would like to add to Ben Cohen's article on WS4 in the September PIP is that the MS-DOS version can print and edit at the same time, only not on the same file. If you must do this you can copy the file to a new file, print the new file, and edit the old one. This is also an excellent way to get confused but it can be done. Even on my trusty OKI the WordStar printer drive appears slow. For example a 3 page 7.4k file took 1 minute 27 seconds to print through WS, and 1 minute 20 seconds to print using the DOS "PRINT" command.

Also regarding WS4 on MS-DOS I've installed it on 2 different machines and the statement in CONFIG.SYS that files=20 was adequate.

MicroPro's Gramatik II
While visiting a Micropro presentation on their products I saw a demonstration of a program that they distribute called Grammatik II. (It is actually by Reference Software, Inc.) It is an enhanced version of the CP/M program Grammatik by Aspen Software that comes as part of the Osborne WORD-PAC software package. Since MicroPro is distributing the new package it comes preinstalled for their products.

Both packages are the next step beyond the spelling checker in that they comment on how you are writing and offer suggestions for improvement. [See Steve's separate review of both Grammatiks for more details. -- bhc]