BeOS for Not Yet Techies

Is BeOS for you? Are you looking for an alternative to Windows? Who isn't? Actually, a lot of people who want to use computers and who don't want to be techies. Catering to people who just want to use -- not understand and control -- computers is why Microsoft is so successful. However, BeOS may prove highly popular, especially as broadband access increases and people use the Internet for multimedia.

Did you buy your car because your mechanic likes it or because *you* liked it?

BeOS is an operating system made by Be, Inc. It is well designed, much faster than Windows and still easier to use. Actually, its design is not far different than Windows, it just performs better. It is so fast, it does not even have an hourglass!

When I first began checking BEOS out, I had a pretty neutral at best attitude. Why another operating system, I figured. Linux seemed the best bet for knocking Microsoft and Windows off their perch at the top of the mountain.

See, I've had a PC long enough to have had experience with DOS, and of course many many Windows crashes and out of memory errors and lockups. At first it just seemed to be something that came with the territory. BeOS was in the future.

Then one day I talked to a tech support guy about computer instability and he told me that it happened because of DOS memory management (which BeOS doesn't have).

I can't explain this in great detail and you probably don't care about the details, but basically DOS memory management intensively subdivides the first 640k of DOS and therefore Windows RAM.

See, DOS dates back to the prehistoric days when hardware memory was measured in kg instead of g or mg. Whoever dreamed that we would ever need to use more than 640k RAM? :)

So the tech explained that since of course our computers were now using much more memory space, shifting information through the bands within the first 640k was highly inefficient. All of us Windows users are saddled with the problem of Microsoft's legacy - but not BeOS.

Then I had a great idea - why not start all over again, designing Windows so that its memory system made efficient use of the memory capacity of modern computers, rather than remaining chained to the limitations of the past? That's the genius of BeOS - they implemented my idea. :)

There is a good reason why Microsoft doesn't do that. It is committed to keeping Windows backwards compatible so that it will continue to run all programs ever written for it and DOS. BeOS has no such past history.

I didn't know how to follow up on my idea and it's just as well because unknown to me and that techie, somebody else had already had the same idea - and was in the process of designing an operating system unburdened by the need to stay backwards compatible with the ancient limitations of DOS. That is the essence of BeOS.

BeOS - Page 2