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> Already in February of 1984, PC Magazine could point to at least four other GUIs of one sort or another in the works from other third-party developers: Concur

> Already in February of 1984, PC Magazine could point to at least four other GUIs of one sort or another in the works from other third-party developers: Concurrent CP/M with Windows by Digital Research, VisuALL by Trillian Computer Corporation, DesqView by Quarterdeck Office Systems, and WindowMaster by Structured Systems I've at least heard of the latter two, unlike the former ones, or VisiOn. IIRC,they were mentioned in the documentation of some program or game or another I had found and tried to run on my assembled-or-modified-from-scrap computers back in the mid-90s. I assume they had achieved some measure of success and presence in the marketplace (however small or brief that may have been), had they managed to be worth mention in an old DOS or Windows application's documentation. I'm curious if they'll be covered in subsequent articles in this series.

kryptiskt 8y ago
DesqView was big in the 80's for multitasking DOS programs. It wasn't a graphical window system, but ran in text mode.
- chipotle_coyote 8y ago
  DESQview (as its maker styled it) was a great program for those of us who weren't convinced yet by Windows. While you're right that it started out as text-only (although IIRC later versions supported mice, and you could drag windows around and resize them that way), one of Quarterdeck's last products was DESQview/X, which was basically an X11 server running under DOS. It could run 16-bit Windows applications, DOS applications, and X applications.
- gscott 8y ago
  DesqView 386 let me run multiple bbs lines my PC didn't have good enough specs to run Windows with multiple dos programs running at the same time.... Good times I feel bbs's were still mostly better then the web today.
- mirimir 8y ago
  I loved DESQview/X. Better than any of the initial Windows releases. Also Quarterdeck's QEMM, which provided access to needed RAM. Also bizarre HDDs on cards, for some purpose I can't even remember. It wasn't until Windows NT that I had something I liked better than DesqView.
jccalhoun 8y ago
Pics of many GUIs can be found here: http://toastytech.com/guis/index.html http://toastytech.com/guis/index.html

kryptiskt 8y ago

DesqView was big in the 80's for multitasking DOS programs. It wasn't a graphical window system, but ran in text mode.

chipotle_coyote 8y ago
DESQview (as its maker styled it) was a great program for those of us who weren't convinced yet by Windows. While you're right that it started out as text-only (although IIRC later versions supported mice, and you could drag windows around and resize them that way), one of Quarterdeck's last products was DESQview/X, which was basically an X11 server running under DOS. It could run 16-bit Windows applications, DOS applications, and X applications.
gscott 8y ago
DesqView 386 let me run multiple bbs lines my PC didn't have good enough specs to run Windows with multiple dos programs running at the same time.... Good times I feel bbs's were still mostly better then the web today.
mirimir 8y ago
I loved DESQview/X. Better than any of the initial Windows releases. Also Quarterdeck's QEMM, which provided access to needed RAM. Also bizarre HDDs on cards, for some purpose I can't even remember. It wasn't until Windows NT that I had something I liked better than DesqView.

jccalhoun 8y ago

Pics of many GUIs can be found here: http://toastytech.com/guis/index.html http://toastytech.com/guis/index.html