Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:38:58 -0600
From: Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org>
My summer job between college terms was working at
Egghead software, and
there was a massive, MASSIVE push from Egghead to sell MS-DOS 5.0. We
(lowly sales floor associates) were bussed to a convention center and
shown various presentations on why MS-DOS 5.0 was dA b0mB and why it was
the perfect add-on to any and all sales already in progress at the
register. Many cheezy sales guides and videos followed. While I liked
the built-in memory management and disk compression (because I'm a
compression geek) of 5.0, I was extremely turned off by the push.
Speaking of cheezy MS-DOS, does anyone want a copy of the MS-DOS 5.0
user's manual, beta version, labeled "Microsoft Confidential"? May
17, 1990 and the usual rough-copy workup with lots of boxes labeled
"This artwork not available for this release". About 350 pages.
Otherwise, I value the binder it's in more than the paper, so the
ephemera will go into the recycling pile if unclaimed. I don't know
how it differs from the release version, as I never bothered to read
it.
Real programmers don't need no stinkin' user's manual.
Cheers,
Chuck