RISC OS 4 Roadshow
Colin Sutton reports on the recent visit of RISCOS Ltd to the Wakefield Acorn Computer Group, when Technical Director Andrew Rawnsley extolled the benefits of RISC OS 4
RISC OS 4 RoadshowColin Sutton reports on the recent visit of RISCOS Ltd to the Wakefield Acorn Computer Group, when Technical Director Andrew Rawnsley extolled the benefits of RISC OS 4 |
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[This article, taken from issue 1, concerns a RISC OS Roadshow presentation given by Andrew Rawnsley in January 2000.]
This article also appears in Awake, the newsletter of the Wakefield Acorn Computer Group.
The first meeting of the new year for the Wakefield Acorn Computer Group (WACG) started very well with a welcome visit by Andrew Rawnsley of RISCOS Ltd to talk about the new RISC OS 4. This very topic combined with favourably mild weather to attract a large audience, including a face not often seen at our meetings: Richard Hallas, esteemed former Editor and writer for RISC User magazine for a number of years, and now Editor of Foundation RISC User, the new quarterly CD-ROM-based magazine published by RISCOS Ltd.
Andrew Rawnsley has spoken at WACG on previous occasions and is already well known to many members historically through his family software business of R-Comp and R-Comp Interactive. However, RISC OS 4 and nothing else was the topic for the evening, and the audience hung on to every word as Andrew started by explaining how RISCOS Ltd was formed almost a year ago following the demise of Acorn.
The then fledgling company had inherited a new operating system which was about 80% complete, but with many bugs to sort out and features to refine from the source code CD now in their possession. The new company was headed by Paul Middleton (of Uniqueway) as its MD, Andrew as Technical Director and a duo of brilliant and committed software engineers in the form of (alphabetically) Matthew Bullock and Justin Fletcher; names already familiar to many in the Acorn scene.
A show of hands indicated that only a few of those present at the meeting had actually installed RISC OS 4, so Andrew was not just speaking to the converted but had the opportunity to win over an even larger group with the new OS.
Beavering away in a secret location, RISCOS Ltd managed to have the first copies of RISC OS 4 shipped in July 1999. A delay followed due to the worldwide production of Flash ROMs being booked by the large mobile phone companies and so upsetting the RISC OS 4 release schedule. OTP (One-Time Programmable) ROMs were found to be the solution, and so by September 1999, RISCOS Ltd had fulfilled the backlog of orders by using this kind of chip instead.
At this point I should mention that RISCOS Ltd history and full details of RISC OS 4 have already been well documented in RISC User, Archive and Acorn User magazines, and so are probably not worth repeating here.
Printers has been improved, and now has support for printer error detection. Some of the bundled applications were demonstrated, such as Writer, Organizer and Vector, and other programs are provided with the upgrade, together with a host of useful PD and shareware applications on CD-ROM.
At this point Andrew took questions from the floor, which included an enquiry as to whether RISCOS Ltd was in profit. Andrew's answer was that the company's financial affairs were a matter for its shareholders. Whilst I don't think that Club members expected actual figures to be quoted, we must assume that Andrew was not fully briefed to discuss that particular subject in public.
Another question arose on the subject of Acorn Replay, which is not included with the RISC OS 4 upgrade, and again Andrew was somewhat cautious with his reply as Sophie Wilson, the original developer of Replay (who now works with Element 14 in Cambridge), is hanging on to it; it has not been acquired by Pace. Andrew did, however, make it clear that existing copies of Replay that users already own will work perfectly well with the upgrade.
Networking is important to schools, where it is necessary to co-exist with PC and Mac networks. Auto-configuration is seen as a desirable feature.
Printing is important both for schools and for the home, and Andrew felt that the latest printing system in RISC OS 4 is better than that provided by most other operating systems, except for possibly Windows 95/98. Windows NT is in a similar boat to RISC OS, even though Microsoft recommends that NT, and not Windows 98, should be used by business users.
Printers+, or Printers 2, or "whatever we choose to call it" is seen as a chargeable upgrade, whilst Printers Net will be a complete offering which enables the use of "any old printer server box" along with auto-configuration. However, the original but improved version of Printers will remain free of charge. Printers 2 is not yet complete, but will seek to address such things as colour balances, auto-start and auto-quit options, and a simplified configuration system which allow a Configure plug-in to select the printer. It seems that there are no plans to support photo-realistic printers, as RISCOS Ltd is leaving such developments to specialists like Spacetech and ExpLAN, who market commercial drivers.
Andrew ended the discussion by presenting his views on PMT (pre-emptive multitasking). Whilst helpful for background printing, he did not feel the other benefits significant for the enormous amount of work involved in introducing this mode of operation.
More questions from the floor, along with some helpful software compatibility observations from Richard Hallas, combined to make this a very informative evening, and several copies of RISC OS 4 were sold afterwards.
Wakefield will again welcome Andrew in May, when he supports the Wakefield 2000 Show along with his RISCOS Ltd colleagues. This promises to be an exciting weekend!