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3000 managers press Win95 into service - slowly
 
Desktop experiments more common than corporate deployment
 
By Ron Seybold
3000 News/Wire
 
   After a media blitz including Jay Leno, a multi-million
dollar Rolling Stones theme and a trip down the outside of
the Canadian National tower, Microsoft's Windows 95 was
running on many HP 3000 managers' desktops. An informal
survey showed none had installed it as a company-wide client
yet.
 
   Early adopters praised the improvements in performance,
networking and interface for the software, perhaps the most
promoted computer product in history. While the early reports
were favorable from an HP 3000 perspective, advantages to
3000 operations are either still in the future or harder to
pinpoint than an open Microsoft help line on a Saturday.
 
   Microsoft left little undone in its promotion: paying $16
million for the Rolling Stones' "Start It Up," hiring Jay
Leno for the rollout press conference, sending a rappelling
expert down the side of the Canadian National tower in front
of a Windows 95 banner. Midway down the 100-story ride, the
mountaineer stopped and used Win95 from a wireless laptop. It
was all too much for Birket Foster, president of HP 3000
channel partner M.B. Foster Associates and supplier of
Windows products.
 
   "It's all a media event," Foster said. "Is the average user
going to do that? It's all way too much hype for what's being
delivered."
 
   Foster's company installed Win95 in about an hour with few
problems, enabling a PC in order to provide customer support.
He said installing the product will force upgrades of PC
systems in memory and disk capacity, and expected Win95 "to
create lots of market confusion over the next year. There's
also lots of programs that don't run under it yet."
 
   One user reported that HP's LaserROM client generated a
General Protection Fault under Win95. Foster said
installation could run as long as 3 hours, and a
widely-reported story indicated that networking software for
CompuServe and Internet links were deleted during
installation. Technicians from WRQ Software clarified the
last report: network setup under Win95 restores Microsoft's
winsock.dll file.
 
   "If any of a user's internet providers use a Winsock
interface, that could cause the problem," said the WRQ engineer.  Users should
verify there's only one winsock.dll on your machine and it is in the correct
directory.  "Even if you rename the ones in
 \windows and \windows\system, they will re-appear there
later for no apparent reason."
 
   HP 3000 managers pointed to advantages in client-server
architecture as the chief benefit to MPE/iX operations.
Gilles Schipper, principal of integration firm GSA Inc., said
"there should be no negative impact for HP 3000 users to move
to Win95. I've experienced no problems whatsoever in
interacting with our HP 3000."
 
  The software's real impact to 3000 operations, Schipper
said, "is more in client/server issues. If I were developing
client/server applications, I would rather
standardize on 32-bit clients, such as the new MS Access,
rather than staying with the 16-bit Win 3.11 clients."
 
   HP supported the new software from the first day of its
release, but still gives its own PC customers an option of
taking delivery of units with Windows 3.11 installed. As for
Access, it was one of the applications not yet ready for use
with Win95. Microsoft promises to deliver Access 95 by
November.
 
   Jim Wowchuck, another HP integrator and supplier of HP 3000
software, said Win95 provides built-in TCP/IP support ("We
can now develop PC/3000 applications that we can properly
expect to be in demand") multi-threading for communications
programs ("these will make the end result even easier to work
with, more reliable and simpler to design - well that's what
the theory says") and perhaps most intriguing, remote
procedure call support.
 
    "Previous to this, RPC was a $10,000 development option,
excluding the few WinNT systems." Wowchuck said. "Now it's
sort of free.  The fact that Microsoft don't follow either of
the two standards (DCE or ONC) doesn't mean it won't be used.
 We are still waiting on the 5.5 release of MPE, though, to
support the same DCE/RPC."
 
   Other corporate managers said Win95 might work as a
consolidating factor for HP 3000 shops, providing network
services built into the PC's operating system. "This
eliminates software from many vendors, standardizes network
software on PCs, and for some, will confirm the viability of
NT as a PC server," said one manager. "It brings nothing
intrinsic to the 3000, but it removes many questions about
3000 clients. I'm surprised at how stable it is."
 
   Jeff Kell, HP 3000 manager at the University of Tennessee
at Chattanooga, also believes Win95 makes client networking
more robust, and sees better conventional memory management
as a plus. But capturing the advantages for database access
still demands more polish, in his view. "Until ODBC and other
issues are ironed out, I wouldn't rush out and install Win95
until these features are validated, if they're critical to
you," he said.
 
   Praise for the connectivity tools and interface
improvements seemed to lead the way among early adopters in
the HP 3000 community. The connectivity
tools are better, and it is better integrated than DOS and
Windows for Workgroups," said Mark Klein, lead architect for
HP channel partner ORBiT Software. " Win95 definitely has its
place. Those connectivity issues are a major reason to jump
early."
 
   Klein also said 32-bit client applications doesn't bring
everything else down with them when they crash under Win95.
"That is enough of an incentive to power users to rather switch
 than fight," he said.
 
  Stability of the software in HP 3000 client server
applications is better than Windows 3.11, but still being
evaluated at HP channel partner HI-COMP Software. Denys
Beauchamin said the older Windows software "would crash maybe
one a day or more.  When doing client/server stuff to the
HP3000, this could get embarrassing and not a little
disturbing. So far, Win95 has not crashed once. Win95 is only
running on one of the PCs here - we will not migrate the
others until we are completely at ease with its stability."
 
 
Ron Seybold, Editor In Chief
The 3000 News/Wire
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