CompuServe Magazine
JF>> If there's one lesson to be learned about operating system upgrades,
JF>> it's to break with the past as soon as possible. Or at least, that's a
Actually, when it comes to MS-DOS, I disagree with you. I feel (and
recommend to users) that if a version is working for you, then don't
upgrade until you HAVE to.
MS-DOS 3.3 still uses the least amount of memory of any recent version of
dos, on the most machines. It's stable, bugfree and WORKS! <g>. I run
this at the store on all our networked machines. (where reliability is a
must).
At home, I run MS-DOS 4.01 so that I can take advantage of it's access of
large hard drive partitions (3.3 is limited to 32meg HD partitions). I only
switched to it, after I learned how to get around the bugs still in DOS
4.01. But there are still some good programs out in the PD/Freeware world
that haven't been upgraded to work with 4.01.
As for DOS 5.0, I won't even consider personally switching until maybe 5.01
comes out. There's already bug reports (so much for over a year of beta
testing). And loading MS-DOS high isn't all it's cracked up to be. When you
use their memory manager, it slows a lot of '286/'386 systems down to half
speed. And if you want to run QEMM386 and/or Desqview on a '386… if you
load DOS high, you actually end up with LESS memory for use. If you run it
low, you're no better off than with DOS 4.01.
As long as all your programs continue to work with the version of the OS
you have, it's safer to stay where you are.