The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
MS-DOS 6 Upgrade
Ash Nallawalla
 ash@melbpc.org.au

Microsoft released its MS-DOS 6 Upgrade (DOS 6) on 30 March 1993. It is not yet available as a full version, although that will be sold with complete systems in due course. Reaction from early users and those who saw the public launch is cautious, unlike the excitement caused by MS-DOS 5 about two years ago. The initial impression is that it supplies many cut-down versions of features that are available from third parties at considerable expense. Should you upgrade?

Packaging

Microsoft packaging is becoming increasingly kinder to trees. The 321-page User's Guide is the only document in the box if you disregard the registration card. The manual no longer contains the bulk of the DOS commands, which are now in a comprehensive online form. You also have help available at the command line. The 3.5-inch disk version comes on three high-density disks.

New Features

The packaging extols disk-compression as the main new feature. This is the DoubleSpace utility that you need not use if you prefer. Although you can 'double' your hard disk capacity, that is only true if you have no compressed files such as those created with LHA, PKZIP and others.

I have mentioned elsewhere the other utilities that partially replace features found in free-standing packages from other vendors. You might end up buying those products, anyway, for you just get a taste of them in DOS 6.

All you Windows haters - why would Microsoft give you Windows versions of Undelete, AntiVirus, and Backup, unless it was good for you? At work, I have noticed that I do most of my work with Windows software. By the time DOS 7 comes, we might find that it has a striking resemblance to Windows.

The significant improvements in MS-DOS6 for my purposes are:
  • MSCDEX2.2 is going to make it easy for my CD-ROM drive to be accessed from Windows for Workgroups on another PC; however, Workgroup Connection is not supplied in Dos 6.
  • The new MOVE command is great for moving files between directories or drives, and for renaming them, as is the case with the UNIX environment.
  • The new DELTREE command will make it easy to delete an entire directory, its subdirectories, and their files.
  • Improvements have been made in the EMM386 device driver, the MEM,LOADHIGH DEVICEHIGH commands.
  • Fewer status messages from MIMEM, EMM386 and SMARTDRV during start-up will help to demystify the PC for beginners, although power users can still ask for them. 
  • When Santa Claus presents me with my first laptop I will appreciate the POWER program, which will conserve the battery. The INTERLNK program will make it easy to move files between the laptop and the desktop PCs. ('Laptop' here includes all portable PCs, including (`notebooks.')
  • You can have multiple PC configurations if several people share a PC and have differing needs. The GEM version of Ventura Publisher is an example of requiring a special configuration that would be wasteful of memory for other programs. Different network logons are another example. You can now configure a user menu through CONFIG.SYS so that the user can choose the appropriate option. 
  • You can bypass the settings in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT either one at a time (by placing a question mark before the equal sign in CONFIG.SYS or by pressing the Shift key while MS-DOS starts. This is a faster way to narrow down conflicts between new software and previously installed software. 
  • If you have a network and DOS 5, upgrading to DOS 6 requires no changes.
Installation

Installation of DOS 6 was very quick. I also installed DoubleSpace, my first venture of the kind because I finally had a program that would keep my PC 'standard.' It's amazing what Microsoft's badge can do to a product. Shame on me. DoubleSpace in-creased my 127 MB C: partition by 77 MB. The mixture of files on my drive suggested a compression ratio of 1.6 to 1. DoubleSpace took 67 minutes to do its work. It created a new uncompressed I: drive.

In Use

These comments are based on a five-day period of use, for that is the time we had available before this issue was put to bed.

My first impression after installation was the faster speed of operation of several programs. This is probably because of the improved EMM386, loadhigh, devicehigh, and SMARTDrive utilities.

Compression in DOS 6 is similar to other similar schemes - if your drive is completely full of archived or GIF files, you will not 'increase' your free space. However, most of us have a sizeable quantity of uncompressed data files such as word processor and database files, and will benefit.

MemMaker saved me 37 kB of conventional memory after trying 94 combinations of my AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files and analysing their 'intentions.' This utility is similar to those provided by Quarterdeck and Qualitas and with manual twiddling I can possibly save more conventional RAM.

I ran Anti-Virus but not surprisingly it did not find a virus. I will remove it from my disk because I prefer another product and can get updates very easily through my employers site licence, which covers home use. The manual says that one can get two updates to the virus definitions from a Sydney address for US$67.80. Perhaps that is a typographical error but is too high in my opinion, when US residents will pay only US$9.95 for one update. There is no mention of two free updates (plus postage and media cost), as some people have been led to believe.

I used Backup for a nominal test and my only observation is that it does not support tape drives. I understand Norton Desktop for Windows version 2.2 is the answer to that situation.

The Defragmenter is painfully slow, and I will wait for some third-party product to optimise the drive faster. I have been running it overnight. Norton Utilities 7.0 will be worth a look.

Dosshell is as crippled as ever, and I speculate that Central Point Software and Symantec are pleased about that. I ditched PC Tools at version 7.1 and the Dosshell from DOS 5 in favour of Norton Desktop for DOS. I would keep Dosshell if the 'Disk' features of the other two programs were available there.

Conclusion

I am not convinced about the DoubleSpace feature although I will use it. I had a problem with a BBS front-end program until I increased the values in FILuES and BUFFERS. Undoubtedly, some third-party programs will need to be updated to run under DOS 6. The enhancements to DOS 6 alone make the upgrade worth the $99 price ($69 to Communique members). The price is identical to US street prices of US$49 and more. I recommend this product.

Reprinted from the May 1993 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
 

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