4 ms·

Sounds amazing. Why wasn’t it a success? Was performance bad on the systems of the time? Priced too high? Lack of marketing muscle?

by wk_end 5y ago

WoodenChair 5y ago
There's some information on Wikipedia about the company's decline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview#Decline_of_DESQview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview#Decline_of_DESQview
- narrator 5y ago
  Seems like the pre-Linux trend of nickel and diming for everything, especially tcp/ip network connectivity contributed heavily to the failure of the platform.
bboreham 5y ago
No application software. Went up against Windows 3.
- a-dub 5y ago
  pc market also didn't have much use for X11 then either. i think this even predated xfree86. would be curious if it actually would work with remote x clients on the unix machines of the time. (assuming they had complete X11 implementations)
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    It did, xfree86 was a Linux thing.
  - bboreham 5y ago
    I worked on X11 applications from 1988 to 1992, including Lotus 123 for Motif. Every Unix machine of the day had a complete X11, it was the big thing. The PC market had X servers like Exceed, but in 1990 it was uncommon for a PC to have enough RAM to run DOS, a TCP stack and X11. Also the TCP stack was $400 per seat. As PCs got more powerful, Windows 3 fitted most people’s needs much better, and came with Solitaire.
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
Likely few potential customers really needed the features it offered. X11 support only made sense if you had Unix around already, and if that was the case, you were probably investing in Unix workstations anyways? The workstation market was hot around then. Even Atari and Commodore tried to bring out lower end 68020 & 68030 Unix workstations. Until Windows 95 and NT rolled out it seemed like maybe the future belonged to Unix. But that didn't pan out, really, not til later anyways. Re: price $275 in 1992, it seems: https://techmonitor.ai/techonology/quarterdecks_desqviewx_due_to_begin_shipping https://techmonitor.ai/techonology/quarterdecks_desqviewx_du... So not cheap, but not insanely priced. But in 1993 I was also installing Linux for free on my 486. And I even had a working X11 environment.
- cbm-vic-20 5y ago
  $275 was much, much cheaper than a Unix workstation. Linux with X was only a year away, though, and that put a nail in the coffin of DV/X as cheap-PC-as-X-server. Universities in the early 90s had networked X services everywhere.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    > Universities in the early 90s had networked X services everywhere. I was definitely born a little bit too late. I started university in the very-late 90s, and nearly all the "public" (as in, open to all students) computer labs ran Windows NT (and later Win2k). (At least they were set up with networked home directories, so students could easily access saved coursework wherever they were.) But there was one lab in particular that I enjoyed, though: one of my professors had a computer lab that he had de-facto control over, and all the machines ran FreeBSD (his one true OS love). I would ssh back into my dorm-room computer (running Red Hat, I think?), so I could run my personal X11 apps on the X server on the FreeBSD box I was using. Unfortunately I only had access to that lab for a few semesters, as access was granted only while taking some particular classes. Those machines had a bunch of hardware design simulators and Verilog & VHDL compilers on them; it was mainly an ECE hardware design lab.
  - tssva 5y ago
    "Universities in the early 90s had networked X services everywhere." Some universities did. Mine had computer labs with non-networked PC's running DOS and a single machine with a printer attached that you lined up for so you could take your turn to print. But to be fair it was a liberal arts school with no computer sciences or engineering program.
ilaksh 5y ago
Personally I think that it was just too awesome for most people to appreciate due to stupidity and lack of knowledge. Being able to run X Windows programs an DOS and Windows 3 is amazing. I am sure there are lots of ways it could have been taken advantage of. The majority of potential customers were just too dumb though. There doesn't always need to be a good reason for something to be unpopular. Sometimes, it's just because the flock of sheep were going in a different direction. Maybe they were going that way because the shepard got a bribe.
sliken 5y ago
Being compatible with everything (X11, dos, and windows) meant zero native apps. Microsoft tried with Windows for Workgroups, but eventually got better at networking and multitasking and most importantly had many native apps.
cowmix 5y ago
Display device driver support wasn't that great.
blihp 5y ago
There were a few issues: 1) Running X and DOS applications was an interesting concept in a world (i.e. x86 PCs) where no standard GUI had yet dominated. The concept that Quarterdeck was likely banking on was that DOS apps would continue to be the standard on the PC with more 'enterprisey' applications running on big iron Unix systems for corporations/government/education. Unfortunately for Quarterdeck, this didn't happen the way they thought/hoped it would as X never really got traction beyond the workstation market until Linux took off. As we all know now, the way most users ended up interacting with Unix/Linux systems is via a web browser... no X required. 2) This was right around the time Windows was starting to take off. While Windows didn't do nearly as good a job at multitasking DOS applications (i.e. it didn't provide them as much conventional memory and the task switching was quite chunky) it provided enough of a stop-gap solution while Microsoft pushed what would become MS Office hard. So within about a year of it being released, the question was transitioning from 'will it run my DOS applications' to 'will it run my Windows applications' for many. On the X side, by 1994 Linux had both X (client and server) support and a networking stack, performed better and was free. So both sides of the value proposition (multitasking DOS apps and being an X server) were rendered moot. 3) Unlike other desktop OS's, DESQView/X didn't have many 'native' applications since very little software was ever ported to run client-side. So for the majority of users who didn't need to run X applications across a network, it was really just a DOS multitasker with a nice (for its time) GUI.

Sounds amazing. Why wasn’t it a success? Was performance bad on the systems of the time? Priced too high? Lack of marketing muscle?

by wk_end 5y ago

Sounds amazing. Why wasn’t it a success? Was performance bad on the systems of the time? Priced too high? Lack of marketing muscle?

WoodenChair 5y ago

There's some information on Wikipedia about the company's decline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview#Decline_of_DESQview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview#Decline_of_DESQview

narrator 5y ago
Seems like the pre-Linux trend of nickel and diming for everything, especially tcp/ip network connectivity contributed heavily to the failure of the platform.

bboreham 5y ago

No application software. Went up against Windows 3.

a-dub 5y ago
pc market also didn't have much use for X11 then either. i think this even predated xfree86. would be curious if it actually would work with remote x clients on the unix machines of the time. (assuming they had complete X11 implementations)
- pjmlp 5y ago
  It did, xfree86 was a Linux thing.
- bboreham 5y ago
  I worked on X11 applications from 1988 to 1992, including Lotus 123 for Motif. Every Unix machine of the day had a complete X11, it was the big thing. The PC market had X servers like Exceed, but in 1990 it was uncommon for a PC to have enough RAM to run DOS, a TCP stack and X11. Also the TCP stack was $400 per seat. As PCs got more powerful, Windows 3 fitted most people’s needs much better, and came with Solitaire.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago

Likely few potential customers really needed the features it offered. X11 support only made sense if you had Unix around already, and if that was the case, you were probably investing in Unix workstations anyways? The workstation market was hot around then. Even Atari and Commodore tried to bring out lower end 68020 & 68030 Unix workstations. Until Windows 95 and NT rolled out it seemed like maybe the future belonged to Unix. But that didn't pan out, really, not til later anyways. Re: price $275 in 1992, it seems: https://techmonitor.ai/techonology/quarterdecks_desqviewx_due_to_begin_shipping https://techmonitor.ai/techonology/quarterdecks_desqviewx_du... So not cheap, but not insanely priced. But in 1993 I was also installing Linux for free on my 486. And I even had a working X11 environment.

cbm-vic-20 5y ago
$275 was much, much cheaper than a Unix workstation. Linux with X was only a year away, though, and that put a nail in the coffin of DV/X as cheap-PC-as-X-server. Universities in the early 90s had networked X services everywhere.
- kelnos 5y ago
  > Universities in the early 90s had networked X services everywhere. I was definitely born a little bit too late. I started university in the very-late 90s, and nearly all the "public" (as in, open to all students) computer labs ran Windows NT (and later Win2k). (At least they were set up with networked home directories, so students could easily access saved coursework wherever they were.) But there was one lab in particular that I enjoyed, though: one of my professors had a computer lab that he had de-facto control over, and all the machines ran FreeBSD (his one true OS love). I would ssh back into my dorm-room computer (running Red Hat, I think?), so I could run my personal X11 apps on the X server on the FreeBSD box I was using. Unfortunately I only had access to that lab for a few semesters, as access was granted only while taking some particular classes. Those machines had a bunch of hardware design simulators and Verilog & VHDL compilers on them; it was mainly an ECE hardware design lab.
- tssva 5y ago
  "Universities in the early 90s had networked X services everywhere." Some universities did. Mine had computer labs with non-networked PC's running DOS and a single machine with a printer attached that you lined up for so you could take your turn to print. But to be fair it was a liberal arts school with no computer sciences or engineering program.

ilaksh 5y ago

Personally I think that it was just too awesome for most people to appreciate due to stupidity and lack of knowledge. Being able to run X Windows programs an DOS and Windows 3 is amazing. I am sure there are lots of ways it could have been taken advantage of. The majority of potential customers were just too dumb though. There doesn't always need to be a good reason for something to be unpopular. Sometimes, it's just because the flock of sheep were going in a different direction. Maybe they were going that way because the shepard got a bribe.

sliken 5y ago

Being compatible with everything (X11, dos, and windows) meant zero native apps. Microsoft tried with Windows for Workgroups, but eventually got better at networking and multitasking and most importantly had many native apps.

cowmix 5y ago

Display device driver support wasn't that great.

blihp 5y ago

There were a few issues: 1) Running X and DOS applications was an interesting concept in a world (i.e. x86 PCs) where no standard GUI had yet dominated. The concept that Quarterdeck was likely banking on was that DOS apps would continue to be the standard on the PC with more 'enterprisey' applications running on big iron Unix systems for corporations/government/education. Unfortunately for Quarterdeck, this didn't happen the way they thought/hoped it would as X never really got traction beyond the workstation market until Linux took off. As we all know now, the way most users ended up interacting with Unix/Linux systems is via a web browser... no X required. 2) This was right around the time Windows was starting to take off. While Windows didn't do nearly as good a job at multitasking DOS applications (i.e. it didn't provide them as much conventional memory and the task switching was quite chunky) it provided enough of a stop-gap solution while Microsoft pushed what would become MS Office hard. So within about a year of it being released, the question was transitioning from 'will it run my DOS applications' to 'will it run my Windows applications' for many. On the X side, by 1994 Linux had both X (client and server) support and a networking stack, performed better and was free. So both sides of the value proposition (multitasking DOS apps and being an X server) were rendered moot. 3) Unlike other desktop OS's, DESQView/X didn't have many 'native' applications since very little software was ever ported to run client-side. So for the majority of users who didn't need to run X applications across a network, it was really just a DOS multitasker with a nice (for its time) GUI.