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| SoftWindows 95 5.0 | Macintosh Utilities |
There's nothing like competition to heat up the Windows emulation market on the Macintosh. For years, that market was represented solely by SoftWindows from Insignia Solutions. When Connectix introduced Virtual PC last year, Insignia faced a worthy competitor. Insignia's response was an updated version 5.0 of SoftWindows 95, and RealPC, a standalone DOS emulator targeted mostly to users who want access to DOS games. Soft-Windows 5.0 is clearly a changed product. Insignia rewrote the main interface to make the program easier to configure. It also boosted emulation speeds to 120 MHz Pentium levels on a fast Mac with sufficient RAM. For the purposes for which most firms will use Windows emulation, this is more than acceptable. It also installs 32-bit Windows drivers to aid in performance. Add a slew of Internet utilities, Active X capability, and price under $200, and you have an attractive package. Although performance is still slower than an actual PC, SoftWin-dows is a convenient solution for a Macintosh law firm that must run PC applications. Insignia requires a PowerMac or clone computer, System 7.1.2 or later, and 16 MB of RAM. More RAM is obviously better, with a minimum of 32 MB strongly recommended. Perfor-mance is also directly related to the processor speed of your Mac. For instance, performance leaps when moving from a 603e chip to the new G3 machines. SoftWindows automatically installs optimized 32-bit Windows/Insignia drivers as it launches to make Windows 95 run more efficiently, and provides a set of useful Mac and PC utilities. On the Mac side is CD-ROM software to read Mac/PC discs, QuickTime 2.5, Open Transport 1.1.1 and a trial version of NTRIGUE Net Client for the Mac. Internet Explorer (Mac) is also included. The PC Extras folder contains Acrobat Reader for the PC, networking programs, Explorer, Office 97 viewers, PKZIP and Stuffit for Windows, and Macromedia's Shockwave for the PC. Although the manual indicates these programs can be installed as needed, they all appeared in my Windows 95 Start menu. SoftWindows' new configuration panel resides in the setup menu of the program. This panel accumulates all configuration options for SoftWindows, all of which can be adjusted in a single visit and applied with a mouse click. This marks a welcome change from the setup options provided in earlier versions. The setup panel determines which drives emulate the PC hard drive, the amount of PC memory available, the Windows desktop size and color depth and display memory, Sound Blaster and MIDI emulation, shared folders with your Mac, and other options, including ones for your serial, printer and joystick ports. Settings are made using a series of mouse clicks and check boxes. Configuring display and desktop sizes for SoftWindows is completely interactive. Simply drag the edges of the Windows 95 desktop on your Mac to the new, preferred size and the changes become effective without having to reboot Windows 95. The program also provides an automatic alert if the settings you've chosen are not optimal. These settings are not without their quirks, however. For example, to control how many colors SoftWindows displays requires a visit to both the program's color depth control, and the control panel in Windows 95. Insignia enables you to use virtual PC drives that were set up using previous versions of the program. Interestingly, it is also compatible with drives set up using Virtual PC. Once I configured the program to my liking, I installed several mainstream PC programs such as WordPerfect, MS-Word and Excel, contact managers, database programs, and several legal-specific boutique programs. I also installed a CD-ROM legal database program, and several CD-ROM legal research programs. All ran without a hitch and at reasonable speed on my Macintosh 9600/300. To test the stability of SoftWindows, I created a shared folder on my Mac, and dragged it onto the Windows 95 desktop. The program automatically created a shared folder as another drive option accessible under the My Computer icon in Windows. I was able to install a beta version of QuickTime 3.0 for Windows 95 using this shared folder. Using the movie player under Windows 95, I ran Mac QuickTime movies in Windows 95. I also created some interactive legal presentations in Director for the Mac, and using a "stub projector," ran the program unaltered on the Windows 95 desktop. On the hardware side, I experienced no difficulty accessing my Mac's floppy, CD-ROM and Zip drives, and my keyboard and mouse. Internet access using Microsoft Internet Explorer also worked fine. I experienced no difficulty accessing a virtual PC drive established in an earlier version of SoftWindows and a Virtual PC drive created last year. SoftWindows 5.0 is neither a standalone PC nor a hardware PC-DOS board for the Mac. If your firm needs a convenient way to access necessary PC legal-specific programs or connect to a PC network, SoftWindows 5.0 is a welcome and less expensive alternative to buying a Pentium card or a Wintel PC. If you require true Pentium speeds, however, your alternatives remain hardware-based. . |
Insignia Solutions $189.95 Reviewed by David A. Saraceno, attorney, Couer d'Alene, Idaho. PROS CONS VERDICT |
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