Re: [MMM] Digest Number 863

Hi Graham,

I was thinking about the early MSDOS years when
people were using MSDOS for word processing,
or Amstrads and so on. I.e. the earlier portable
computers. Multi-tasking would have been useful
then as now. They had it on mainframes before then
when they were set up with many terminals each connected to the
same computer, each user single tasking, but the computer multi-tasking,
so you would think that if the value of it had been understood,
it could have been done on personal computers too,
not in such a versatile way as in Windows, Macs and
modern Linux, maybe in the same way as your
reference to unix describes it. I know that Windows
was late in the game as far as multi-tasking on a
single user machine was concerened.

But I don't know much about that part of the history
- I was out of the loop during the transition
from mainframe to personal computers as my academic
research at the time didn't need computers at all
except for word processing.

Robert