Editor's note: Dr. Steven Struhl is vice president, senior methodologist at Total Research Corporation.

No doubt most of you have seen or read some coverage of Windows 95. Microsoft has invested considerable effort in promoting its new operating system; commentators, pundits and software oracles have made many sage pronouncements; critics have assailed it for not living up to perceived promises or expectations; and finally, many voices have joined the chorus to complain about the "deluge of coverage" following the introduction of Windows 95. Even the folks at the august Consumer Reports took time off from rating soaps and salamis to give their judgment of the new Windows. (They said that you do not need it, really, but we will tell you soon why you should ignore them.) All told, Windows 95 has attracted a memorable fraction of the attention usually lavished on serious national news such as celebrity murder trials and politicians' sexual behavior.

Many of you doubtless already have a copy of Windows 95. Sales during the first weekend alone have been reported at upwards of 1 million copies. Many more apparently have waited, though. This review intends to tell this group what Windows 95 users already know, and to help you decide on whether the switch makes sense. If you already have Windows 95, you may find some useful news in the section on new utilities for this operating system. And of course, all of you will find the usual opinionated and completely wrong-headed comments which you have come to expect in these reviews.

The bottom line: What's in Windows 95 for you

As a marketing, research or planning professional, you likely will find that Windows 95 makes your life at work easier to manage. Some of the improvements mostly remove annoyances and limitations in the older Windows 3.0/3.1/3.11 operating environments (from here on called Windows 3.x). The most important improvements in Windows 95 in fact lie far beneath its handsome new surface. Just possibly, then, you may not find using this new operating system an ecstatic experience. You will, though, find your work tending to move more smoothly, with fewer interruptions, and proceeding more in the way you likely approach complex problems.

The answers to several questions can help you decide whether you need Windows 95:

  • Have you had your system crash when you tried to use a large, resource-hungry application? (If you are not familiar with the term crash, it is the special technical designation for what happens when your computer suddenly decides it needs a rest, now. Windows 3.x unfortunately caused this to happen with some frequency.)
  • Do you ever need to run more than three average-sized (or larger) applications at once?
  • Do you often do a lot of "cutting and pasting" among applications?
  • Do you ever wish your computer had the intelligence to do two things at once? For instance, would you like to receive or send a fax with your fax modem software and not have this event take over your PC's entire operation so you could continue working?

The more of these questions to which you answered "yes," the more likely you are to need Windows 95. It can handle all of these exigencies and more. This extra power can make a large difference in how you work even if you have been staying carefully within the confines of a single application until now.

Whether your job involves more research, marketing or some combination of the two, you most likely must deal with large masses of information and make something useful of it. The specifics of this might involve varying amounts of pushing around, pulling apart and crunching information; praying over it; and finally, struggling with how to make it presentable. Some focus more on the analysis, some more on presenting and no doubt some more on the praying. Although these activities may seem widely different, they share one strong commonality: all involve considering complex situations and developing some approach that will allow people to respond to it intelligently. (Perhaps the more cynical would change the last sentence to read, "to believe they respond intelligently.")

Computers have been a great help in dealing with complexity, aiding both the analysis and presentation of ideas. However, they traditionally have required us to divide a task into components handled by separate applications (or programs) and to approach these pieces sequentially. A compartmentalized, linear approach rarely gets us to the center of complex problems, though. The time and attention invested while working on a problem often reveals new areas to investigate or raises new questions. Have you, for instance, ever opened a spreadsheet for some additional analysis as you worked on a presentation? The last thing you want is for the computer to crash at that moment because its memory suddenly became depleted.

Windows 95 at last allows you to avoid disasters like that and continue working. Here are some specific examples, using real products. Microsoft Powerpoint (the company's presentation package) posed problems in Windows 3.x. Powerpoint makes strong demands on "system resources" (specialized regions of Windows memory), and could deplete Windows 3.1, causing it to crash. Powerpoint rarely runs into this trouble in Windows 95. In fact (in an all-too-typical midnight special), I had Powerpoint up and running along with several spreadsheets in Excel, several huge output files from SPSS in Microsoft Word, SPSS itself for additional analyses, Norton file manager, Delrina Winfax Pro (for stray midnight faxes), Hijaak 95 for capturing screen shots, and Lotus Freelance for Windows for scrounging materials from an old presentation. It all worked. I could move data back and forth, analyze and interpret data as needed and make it all into a workable presentation - all before dawn.

This happy outcome never would have happened with Windows 3.x. The need to open and close applications (to avoid a crash) and to restart and recover lost work (from crashes I could not avoid) would have seriously impeded progress on this project. And since this presentation waited until midnight to call itself to my attention, chances are good it would have missed the deadline.

When was the last time that you came across anything that makes it easier to work the way you want to and still get things done? Windows 95 does. As such, it earns a solid recommendation.

The price of power

In a favorite cartoon, two birds stand in front of a sign reading: "Bird Sanctuary." One bird says to the other: "What's the catch?" Wary readers may already have asked the same question about Windows 95, wondering what they need to pay to get its benefits.

The answer is straightforward. You may need to upgrade your computer, even if it is fairly new. If you want to run more than two programs at once, you probably will need 16MB of RAM for acceptable performance. You likely will find speed appreciably slower with 8MB of RAM. As it has less RAM to use, Windows swaps portions of applications out of memory more often to a file it maintains on the hard drive (called, unsurprisingly, the "swap file"). This keeps memory from overflowing as you open more applications, but using the hard drive is always much slower than using RAM. (Hard disk speed is measured in milliseconds while RAM speed is measured in nanoseconds - or millionths of a second.)

Getting enough RAM may provide the biggest boost to speed if you find Windows 95 performance slow.
Unless you have special needs (say, manipulating huge image files or working with the census of the entire U.S.), 32MB of RAM should handle anything you need to do. The midnight special described earlier took place using a 486-based PC with that much memory and everything ran smoothly and responsively throughout.

Windows 95 also uses plenty of hard disk space, requiring some 32 to 38MB more territory than Windows 3.x, depending on the options you choose. Windows 95 checks for disk space during installation and will not let you continue unless you have cleared enough territory.

Before you start

You definitely will want your hard disk in good shape before you start. Practically speaking, this means clearing away unwanted files and using utility programs that check the disk surface for flaws and defragment (or optimize) the drive. Defragmenting means putting back together files that are scattered in various places across the hard drive. If you have not defragmented your hard disk, you doubtless would find it surprising to discover how many files and programs have taken up residence scattered in small pieces. This happens because the PC always fills all "holes" or free spaces on the disk as it saves new data. Every time you erase, save or change a file, this leaves a space of some size, which the PC later will try to fill. If the file in question does not fit into this space, the PC will break it into smaller pieces, using "holes" as it comes to them. Some utility programs let you see how data actually gets stored on the disk -- and more than a few percent fragmentation seems like an incredible mess. Worse, fragmentation can slow the PC noticeably as it looks for and reassembles needed programs or information.

You can find adequate defragmenta-tion utilities as part of both DOS and Windows 3.x. Other companies, such as Norton Utilities and PC Tools (now merged into one company) provide defragmentation programs with more controls and more detailed displays of what they are doing. If you defragment the disk regularly it should stay in top condition and each defragmentation should go fairly quickly. If you are running this procedure for the first time, it could take an hour or more to straighten out the mess you will find. To make this all painless and automatic in the future you may want to consider one of the utilities mentioned later in the "Windows aid" section.

Getting started: What to expect

Suppose you now have your PC in fine running shape and have the Windows 95 installation disk in hand. What should you expect to happen during installation?

Mostly, you will need to practice patience. Also, if you do not yet have a CD-ROM drive, you will find this a great excuse to get one. You can install Windows 95 from floppy disks, but I wouldn't recommend it. Expect installation to run one to two hours even with a CD-ROM drive. Windows 95 spends much of that time determining how to get your hardware working without conflicts and sending you messages that it is nearly finished. Microsoft says installation takes about 45 minutes, but that seems overly optimistic based on experience and the reports I have heard.

After you get Windows 95 installed, you likely will find it takes somewhat longer to load (start) than did Windows 3.x. Once it starts, though, you should find your patience rewarded. We found Windows 95 to run smoothly and noticeably more responsively than Windows 3.x on all the machines where we had run both.

Windows woes?

Windows 95 worked remarkably well with nearly all the old programs we tried. Even DOS games (tested strictly in the name of research) which ran too slowly under Windows 3.x perform well under Windows 95. In short, this operating system can accommodate the new 32-bit applications (some of which actually do more useful things than older applications), along with programs designed for Windows 3.x and DOS.
However strong Windows 95's overall performance, though, like all earthly creations, it cannot do all things at all times. Given the millions of possible combinations of hardware set-ups and software collections, it has to get routed at some time. Complaint levels have been remarkably low, by all accounts - although this will not help if you are the one who hits an unfortunate circumstance.

Also, Windows 95 went through one of the longest and largest testing (or "beta") programs in PC history. As a result, it works surprisingly well surprisingly often. My experience includes a few nearly heart-stopping moments dealing with a pen-and-pressure-sensitive-tablet (which replaced the standard mouse). Happily, all incidents proved to be nothing that time and a calm approach could not rectify.

Third-party problems

Most Windows 95 problems I have encountered (either in print or by sorry personal experience) have been like the one with the pen-and-tablet: caused by products that are supposed to work with Windows but have not quite made the transition to Windows 95. In particular, atypical hardware that needs a "driver" to work (such as an unusual printer, sound card or fax/modem) may cause trouble. Windows 95 itself provides an incredible number of "drivers," and so you are likely to find it includes something that works with nearly any brand on the market.

If you have to rely on another manufacturer for "drivers," though, you may get an unpleasant surprise. For instance, I have used a hardware/software print accelerator called the WinJet, made by a company named LaserMaster. Under Windows 3.1, this transformed my trusty old HP LaserJet from 300 dots per inch (dpi) resolution to 800 dpi and allowed it to produce even complex pages as fast as the printer could run. In short, it was a great Windows 3.1 product. Unfortunately, LaserMaster took a bad slip with Windows 95. The performance of this once sterling product has become erratic and the drivers have remained in test version for at least six months after the official Windows 95 release.

With some luck, LaserMaster will resolve its problems by the time this article reaches print. The wait has not been pleasant, though. This story has a moral: expect Windows 95 to work well with nearly all "mainstream" hardware - but if you have something out of the ordinary, check with the manufacturer. If they do not have drivers ready, you may find yourself stranded. Depending on your needs, that may be enough to make you wait to upgrade.

What else is new

Windows 95 has a new, handsome appearance, as you will doubtless notice immediately. Oddly enough, this one aspect of Windows 95 (its new screen appearance or "interface") is the one highlighted by nearly all product reviews. This shows an important secret of the ad copywriting pros. If you want to describe anything where the most important improvements are in performance, describe how it looks.

When you start Windows 95 for the first time, you cannot help noticing something familiar missing: all those program group windows which seemed to give the system its name. Instead, you will see a largely uncluttered screen, with a bar across the bottom saying "Start," and a few icons on the left side. Move the pointer to the Start button and a menu appears, in which most of the items correspond to your old program group windows. Move the pointer to any of these items (no double-clicking required) and another menu appears (or "cascades") from the first. Move the pointer to the program you want and it appears.
By default, the Start button and the bar associated with it (called the task bar) always remain visible at the bottom of the screen. As you start programs, buttons for them appear in the bar. Click any of these buttons and you go to the program it represents. Close the program entirely (rather than simply switching from it or starting another) and its button will disappear from the task bar at the bottom.
Some people find the new menu system a little too eager to respond. Slide the pointer across the name of a program and it may well start, even if you didn't intend it to. (I can provide a trick for slowing the menus, but this is for the fearless only, those who don't mind tinkering deep in Windows 95's expansive innards. Call or fax for this pointer.)

This last point leads to another large change in Windows 95: Much of the information controlling the operating system's behavior resides in a huge area called the "registry." Windows 95 retains the old win.ini and system.ini files, which used to have control of all Windows settings. However, these files exist only for the sake of older programs that still expect to find them. Those of you who ever looked at the two .ini files and found them intimidating (as I imagine anybody would who dared to look) will find the new registry awe inspiring. You need a special Windows utility called "regedit" just to look inside the new registry and unless you feel very, very expert (or very, very foolish) you will not want to touch it. Just a quick "hands off" tour of it will impress you with the tremendous scope and complexity of Windows 95.

You will find strong improvements in Windows 95's accessories (programs that come with the operating system). Windows now seems much more attuned to communications with the outside world. For instance, Windows 95's file transfer capabilities have dramatically improved with the new HyperTerminal (replacing the old Windows Terminal). HyperTerminal is an excellent, full-featured program for sending and receiving data via modem. It will recall the phone numbers and settings you used in a call or "session" (if you remember to save them), assigning a separate icon to each number you contact via modem. After the first session, with a simple click on the icon you are ready to connect.

Windows 95 features many other changes improving its power and usefulness. In particular, the right button on the mouse (or its equivalent) has finally taken on a full, useful life in Windows 95. Click this button anywhere in Windows 95 and a menu will appear, giving you a set of actions you can perform on (or with) the object in question. (This works both with the operating system itself and with programs designed to run under it.) The right button also adds extra power while you are performing many actions. For instance, try the right button after highlighting a file name in the new (vastly improved) file manager instead of simply dragging and dropping the file. Rather than copying the file or moving the file (which one depends on Windows' built-in rules for files), you will get the choice of opening, moving, copying or creating a short-cut to the file.

The Start menu allows you to call up recently used documents as well as programs. With Windows 95, a document is anything that you have created or altered, including drawings, presentations or even telephone sessions in HyperTerminal. Just click on the document in question and Windows 95 opens it while starting the right program. In short, it keeps pointers to your recent work directly on the main Start menu for you. The catch, though, is that you will find "documents" listed only for Windows 95 programs. Whatever you create or modify in your old Windows 3.x favorites will not show up among the choices.
You now use a special spot on the Start menu to access all the settings for Windows 95, including the display, what you find on the main task bar and the Windows control panel. The new control panel is now much more comprehensive. I find the "system" section particularly impressive. It allows you to examine in detail all the hardware connected to your PC system, to monitor performance and to resolve any conflicts that may arise. Windows 95 has become vastly more intelligent about the hardware you have connected to your system. It avoids most conflicts and explains how to resolve most problems it cannot handle on its own.

Nearly everything you think to ask Windows 95 to do begins by pushing the "Start" button. You even "start" shutting down the computer. It may seem illogical that you need to start to stop, but you will find it not so strange in a short while, and it does keep everything in one spot.

DOS - which you'll remember for its nearly blank screen with perhaps a prompt (>) sign - still exists. Windows 95 has taken full charge of the computer, though. You can see this by restarting the computer in "DOS mode." (This is one option you get when you push the Start button and then ask Windows to shut down the computer.) Once Windows seems to disappear and you find yourself facing the old, nearly blank screen, type "Exit" at the prompt sign. Windows 95 promptly restarts. Our old friend DOS, once in charge of everything, now has become just another program that Windows 95 can call upon as needed.

Windows aid: programs that add to Windows 95

Windows 95 has become much larger and more capable than any of its predecessors, as you doubtless have noticed by now. Even so, you will find substantial benefits in utility programs that further enhance its capabilities. Here we will discuss several highly useful programs from Symantec's Norton Utilities and one from Microsoft itself.

  • Norton Utilities adds extra protection for and control of your PC, continuing the nearly venerable tradition of this program and PC Tools. (Symantec, which sells the Peter Norton programs, merged with Central Point software, which created PC Tools). You will find most (but not all) of the features of these two utility giants in the new Norton Utilities. (Most lamented is the loss of the excellent PC Tools backup utility. Perhaps Symantec will see fit to restore a Windows 95 version of this.) Using Norton Utilities still will provide the most possible protection against PC disasters, in particular problems with your hard drive. The included Norton Disk Doctor can rescue you from problems that might otherwise stop your system cold. You can schedule Norton Utilities to check and repair problems on the hard disk automatically at night and/or to defragment the drive in the small hours. This program has displays that you can customize almost completely which will monitor and show nearly any aspect of your system's operation. If you like the hands-on approach and want the ultimate in ability to customize maintenance of your PC and to see what is happening, you will find much to like in Norton Utilities.
  • Norton Navigator builds on the already good file management capabilities of the Windows 95 Explorer (file manager), showing definitively that creative software developers can find plenty of useful features to add to the solid Windows basics. I find this program indispensable. It allows you to perform all sorts of file operations, including finding, viewing, associating, comparing, zipping and unzipping, by one simple press on a button.

    The "Fast Find" function truly does a fast job - for instance, quickly running through the much of 1.2 gigabytes (yes, that's 1,200 megabytes) of miscellaneous stuff your writer has accumulated, to find needed files. This feature runs much more quickly than the comparable Windows 95-based file finders.

    The Norton Navigator also allows you to view the entire contents of a branch (any given directory and all its subdirectories) and has a very handy "outline" view that lets you see how many files of various types you have and how much space they occupy. (You can expand or collapse these outlines to see all the files or a summary. And the outlines work with the branch view.) You can set the delete option to "wipe" delete, which you will find very handy if you want to purge files forever in one step. (Windows 95 otherwise protects you from yourself, sending deleted files to a "recycle bin," where they continue to reside mostly hidden on your hard drive. Keep deleting large files and adding them to the recycle bin and your hard drive unsurprisingly will start running out of space.)

    Anybody who has accumulated more files than they planned or even thought possible (which is nearly everybody) should find Norton Navigator a really useful addition to their Windows armamentarium.
  • Norton Antivirus does exactly what its name implies: It hunts down and destroys viruses that may infest your PC. An earlier version of this program once quickly found a virus on a floppy disk supposedly containing data only. As a result, I could call my (then) main office and undo an infection that had already spread to dozens of machines - before any real damage had happened. Since then, viruses have become even more widespread. Various self-styled hackers (once a term of honor now fallen into opprobrium) have misapplied their intelligence to put viruses in all manner of places. Reports have surfaced of viruses even infecting macros that run on Word for Windows. Warnings have hit print about viruses in so called "Internet mini-applications," which do not even yet exist. This excellent protection offered by this anti-virus program is more important than ever.

    You can schedule Norton Antivirus to run at startup, to monitor the computer continuously, or to make complete sweeps of the system at preset times. Also, as an Antivirus user, you can contact Symantec on-line (for instance, via CompuServe or the World Wide Web) and download protection against new viruses as they emerge. Most tests show this program offers protection against invasion as good as anything on the market. This is one form of safeguard it really makes sense to use.
  • Microsoft Plus! offers more of a grab bag of features than any of the Norton products. This set of applications includes some serious hard drive maintenance tools like those in Norton Utilities, along with an improved version of the Microsoft disk compression utility and some fine Internet browsing tools. Plus! also includes a few items that simply are fun, almost as if Microsoft wanted to palliate taking the serious software they accompany.

    The disk compression utility (Drivespace 3) can effectively give you about double the hard disk space you formerly had with little if any degradation in performance. (Windows 95 already provides a version of this utility, but the one that comes with Plus! works more effectively.) Drivespace 3 does this sleight-of-hand by replacing repeating data with more compact representations that are decoded "on the fly" in the computer's RAM. Interestingly, much of the information stored in your PC, whether programs or data, contains a lot of repetitious data, which therefore can be compressed. Because this partly encoded information takes less physical space on the hard drive, the computer needs less time to find it and put it into RAM. And since RAM works so much faster than the hard drive, any time spent decoding the compressed information usually does not exceed the savings in accessing the hard disk. Overall speed of operation should be about the same. Disk compression does use a small amount of RAM memory, but not enough to interfere with any computer operation. If your once huge-seeming hard drive is starting to look small, you might really appreciate this feature.

    Plus! also includes a "system agent" similar to the system maintenance tools found in Norton Utilities. Like the Norton Utilities, this can be set to run silently in the background, maintaining the system during off hours, and stepping in as needed to make or recommend repairs. Unlike the Norton module, this system agent stays mainly in the background. You may never notice it running unless it encounters a problem on which it wants to ask your opinion or give you choices for a repair. If you like the idea of your PC more or less taking care of itself and do not want the extensive displays and custom controls found in the Norton Utilities, you should find Plus! exactly what you want.

    Microsoft also included some interesting, perhaps even fun, elements in the Plus! bundle. It has a full set of what are called "desktop themes," including some very detailed Windows backgrounds, many additional icons, and sounds that give your PC more of a personality. Perhaps most importantly (strictly as a demonstration of how much faster graphics run under Windows 95), Plus! includes one of the best PC-based pinball games your author has ever encountered. I can speak with some authority here, since I spent far more of my college education than I like to admit mastering the pinball machines in the dormitory basements at Harvard University (where I, most emphatically, did not go to college). In any event, the game, called Space Cadet, certainly will demonstrate the amazing improvement in Windows 95's handling of video. Therefore, in the name of scientific inquiry, I strongly recommend that you get this valuable addition to Windows 95.

Perhaps most remarkable about all these utilities is the way that they work with the main operating system, rather than taking it over or hiding it, as did many of the Windows 3.x "desktops" and other "extender" programs. All of these fit into Windows 95, working with elements already there and then stepping out of the way once they have done their jobs. For the most part, when used with some discretion, they run smoothly, if not seamlessly, with the main Windows 95 system. (You would not, for instance, want to run all the features of Plus! and Norton Utilities together, as they have elements that overlap. However, I can attest to the fact that selected portions of each coexist nicely and add to each other.) These utilities really work with Windows and get useful things done. As such, they give us a glimpse of where software should have been going since the beginning: making the computer a machine that does what we need as we need it and otherwise does not get in our way.

Unfortunately, one problem with Windows 95 seems hard to avoid: It appears nearly impossible to write a short article about it. There are many more details, including all sorts of fascinating points about Windows 95's inner operations (which impress me greatly) that I finally decided not to discuss. And certainly, I find all sorts of remarkable things in the software designed to run with this new operating system. That, though, will have to wait for another time.