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Feedback from October 15

Netscape Review

After using Netscape/2 for almost a week now I think that your reviewer failed to mention one of the most outstanding features that this product has over WebExplorer, when you are cruising around the web an find a site that has say, a demo version of...oh... PMMail for example, available as a linked zip file you are able to click on this link in Netscape/2 which brings up this nifty little box showing the progress of your download... in the mean time while you are waiting for this 1.5... or in some cases 5 meg file to download ... instead of twiddling your thumbs in WebEx or going through the trouble of opening a whole new WebEx ... Netscape/2 just transfers you back to the main window and once again you are off surfing to your hearts content...

James A. Ford


Concerning Netscape Navigator for OS/2: First Looks

First, I want to say that I'm glad to see a Navigator port for OS/2. It's long overdue. However, in reading Tim Walker's article and the writings of many others, I feel a need to comment.

Speed? Tim and others claim Navigator loads pages faster than WebExplorer. I've NEVER seen this. I've compared OS/2 WebExplorer to Navigator for AIX (released version). Sometimes they'd tie. Sometimes WebExplorer would load the page three or four times faster. Now I can compare the Navigator for OS/2 beta1 to WebExplorer 1.1d for OS/2. I've been testing on a 14.4K modem with compression. I used IPSPeed to monitor the port speed. Navigator averages about 700bps for an HTML document. On the other hand WebExplorer averages about 1900bps. Quite a difference!

Navigator is a dog. It's slow to load and is sluggish once loaded (24MB Pentuim 75). While transferring, the whole systems slows down considerably.

An annoyance I've always had with Navigator has been that silly little status bar in the lower right corner. I like WebEx's progress counters in the lower left. You always know if something is happening. You just can't get that feel with Navigator. I have to use a line monitor to make sure that Navigator is actually doing anything sometimes.

Don't get me wrong. I understand that this is a beta and many of my complaints may be fixed in a full release. It's a good beta and I'm impressed with it. I just fail to understand why people are throwing away WebEx prematurely. Right now, WebEx is a more comfortable program. I continue to use it. I only bring up Navigator when I run into a site that requires frames. I won't get into how unimpressed I am with frames now that I have access to them.

William R. Nau


Zip Drives

I found the review very interesting on the ZIP drive. However, I'm interested in the JAZ drive which is a 1G drive. Can I apply the install comments of the review to the JAZ? Also, I believe the JAZ has much faster speeds for access and transfer of data.

Willy Clarkson


- Willy, I don't think the advice regarding installation of the ZIP drive necessarily translates when using the JAZ. You might want to check out FX Leroy's page. It has some info on using the JAZ drive.

Even though I understand the article was not a comparative testing, I found it a little unfair not even to mention Syquest EZ-135 [in your Iomega ZIP drive review], which costs about the same, has 23% more disk space, a much faster disk access time, and last but not least... comes with a "Ready for OS/2 Warp" label on the box. Of course, the driver is supplied in the box, and even a part of the manual is entirely devoted to OS/2 and OS/2 install. Frankly, we do not see how anybody wishing to get this kind of device should be excited by the half-hearted OS/2 support of Iomega, when a competing and better product has always been supporting it to a much larger extent.

Stefano Sutti


- You have a good point Stefano. In fact, we would have preferred to do a comparitive review of the two products. However, when contacted both companies either failed to reply or failed to deliver test units. We were able to provide the ZIP review because one of our contributors had spent his own money on the drive. We would also love to include a review of the EZ-135 but so far, none of our contributors have purchased one and Syquest has not provided an on loan evaluation drive.

In your October Issue, you reviewed the parallel port Zip drive. Chris Wenham mentions the following about the drive and HPFS:

OS/2 users will be especially interested to know that you can format a Zip disk with the HPFS (High Performance) file system. However there are some caveats you should be aware of. HPFS is designed to be used on fixed disks and does not normally support removable media. To use HPFS on a Zip disk you must first Lock the disk, then format it with OS/2's Format program and the /FS:HPFS switch. As soon as Iomega's driver detects that a Zip disk is HPFS formatted it locks the disk and it remains locked during the entire OS/2 session. The eject button on the unit is disabled while the disk is locked. The only way to change the disk is to shut down the system and reboot.
I wanted to point out that everything there is close to correct except for the very last sentence, "the only way to change the disk is to shut down the system and reboot." There is a utility called HPFSRem which will allow you to mount and unmount (remove) HPFS formatted Zip cartridges without rebooting. I've used it for a while now and haven't had any problems (I use a parallel port Zip drive btw). There is also a PM front end for HPFSRem called HPFSPM.

Also I've noticed that HPFS formatted cartridges are *much* faster (since they use OS/2 HPFS Cache) that their FAT counterpart. HPFSRem and HPFSPM can be found on Hobbes. The current version for HPFSRem is 1.1 (HPFSREM1.ZIP) and HPFSPM 1.2 (HPFSPM12.ZIP).

I'm not the author of HPFSRem or HPFSPM, but a happy user...let me know if you have any questions setting it up with a parallel port Zip drive.

Andy


Chris' Rant

I work for a company that is sold out on Windows 95. I've been an OS/2 user since '92. My department decided to use OS/2 as the host for our product. (This after a year of raving about Warp.) On September 26, the department supervisor from another department comes to us and tells us that IBM is dropping OS/2. It seems the erroneous information came from a his brother-in-law that, get this, works at MICROSOFT! We just made a zillion copies of IBM's Web page at www.austin.ibm.com and convinced him of their apparent commitment to OS/2.

Cliff

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