NewDeal Release 3

Is your old hardware sitting in a corner gathering dust? Are DOS and Windows

3.1 the only operating systems (OSs) that run fast enough on your machine? Well,

then here’s one solution to give new life to your old hardware. NewDeal

Release 3 is like a complete OS together with tons of applications for everyday

use. It has a Windows 9x like interface, making it very easy to use. We’ve

given a 45-day trial version of the software on this month’s CD for you to try

out.

In this article, we’ll see how to install and configure NewDeal and use its

various applications.

Installation

Setting up NewDeal to run on your computer requires no elaborate procedures;

nor does it require any elaborate hardware. In fact NewDeal claims that the

minimum system requirements for it to work are a 286 with only 640 kB RAM and 9

MB of free hard drive space. We ran it on a 486 machine with 32 MB RAM.

Interestingly, the technical support FAQs say that NewDeal is a computer OS and

not a disk OS. So it needs a disk operating system like DOS 3 or above to

install. It can also be installed on top of your existing Win 9x/NT setup. Here,

however, you may have some problems with the installation of the mouse and

printer. These have been discussed later in this article.

You can run the installer from the DOS prompt or through Windows. If you have

Windows as the primary OS, use the F8 menu to change to command prompt while

booting. Alternatively, you can ‘Restart in MS-DOS mode’ from start>shut

down. However make sure that you’ve installed the DOS drivers for your CD

drive, else you won’t be able to access it. Now go to the CD-ROM drive of your

machine and to the directory \cdrom\featred\newdeal, and run install.exe to

start the installation process. You can also execute this file through Windows.

After the customary license agreement, you are shown the readme file. We suggest

that you keep a hard copy of this file before you actually start the

installation.

When prompted for country settings, leave it to default USA and move on.

Enter the path where you want to install NewDeal. The package takes up only

around 10 MB of hard disk space and the installer requires at least 520 kB of

free conventional memory (RAM). For this, make sure that himem.sys is loaded

during startup. You can check for this in your config.sys file.

The installation copies all the necessary files and then makes some changes

to your config.sys and autoexec.bat files. The config.sys is modified to change

the memory settings and the autoexec.bat to include NewDeal in the system path

so that it can be executed from a command prompt anywhere. Copies of your

existing files are saved in case you need to uninstall the software. That’s

about it.

Configuration

Once the installation is over, it asks you whether you’d like to continue

with the setup or exit to DOS. If you exit to DOS, the setup will continue the

next time you start NewDeal.

The first thing in the setup is the display configuration. Apart from a host

of chipset-specific drivers, it also shows you a list of generic VESA drivers at

different resolutions and color depths. Choose an option supported by your

graphics card. The selected display settings are tested and you can always go

back if they don’t work. Once through with the display, you are given the

choice of selecting a user interface type, which is basically how the GUI will

look. Out of the two options, one has a Windows 3.1 kind of look and the other

resembles Win 95.

Let’s now configure your mouse. Just like the display settings, you have

the choice of selecting specific drivers or generic ones here too. The mouse is

then tested and you can revert and choose different drivers if it does not work.

A point to note here is that if you are running Windows, the mouse control is

taken over by it. If running within Windows, select the ‘Windows 95 mouse

support already installed’ option.

Next comes the printer installation. Choose the appropriate drivers from the

list for your printer. Here also, there’s a conflict between Windows and

NewDeal, for controlling the printer (This is discussed under ‘Preferences for

NewDeal’ in the next paragraph). After doing all this, you are ready to enter

the world of NewDeal.

You can run the software from DOS prompt or from within Windows. To load the

package, type ‘nde’ at the prompt. To run the software from within Windows,

you can go to Run in Start menu and type nde there. Alternatively, you can make

a shortcut to loader.exe on your desktop. Read the readme.txt document for more

details on setting the shortcut properties. Let’s now see what this package

has to offer.

Existing Windows users will find the look and feel of NewDeal quite familiar.

The workspace has similar windows with similar attributes, which makes using the

package a lot easier. All the windows can be resized or moved as in Windows. You

have four desktop icons by default — Computer, Document (that opens up a new

NewWrite document), World, and Trash. A double-click on the Computer brings up

the various drives and a ‘Preferences’ option. This can be compared to the

Control Panel in Windows. Settings for backgrounds, date/time, video, printer,

ports, sounds, fonts, modem, Internet, mouse, and keyboard can be controlled

from here. It also allows you to configure your PC’s ports, memory settings,

and advanced settings like the swap file. NewDeal also features screen savers

under the head ‘Lights Out’. The user interface that we applied earlier

during installation can also be changed or customized as per your preference.

Applications

Now that you’ve installed NewDeal, it’s time to find out what’s there

so you can put it to use. All applications in NewDeal can easily be accessed

from the Express menu, which is very similar to the Windows Start menu. Simply

click the application you want to use and its ready to run. So let’s get

started.

Main applications

NewWrite is a full-fledged word processor to type letters, create documents,

print them, etc. It also has a drawing toolbar to add predefined graphics, or

draw your own. You can choose different fonts, colors, sizes, and more to suit

your document. You can also import and export your documents into various

formats like plain ASCII text, RTF and even HTML. In fact, this article has been

written in NewWrite.

NewFile is an application to create and maintain databases. It can handle a

maximum of 16,000 records in a single database. You can import and export your

database to other commonly used databases. However, this feature seems to have

been disabled in the evaluation version because it didn’t show any formats to

export to.

NewCalc is NewDeal’s very own spreadsheet, which can be used for things

like balance sheets, calculations, and maintaining accounts. You can also easily

convert all your data into graphs. It also has a drawing toolbar, which lets you

insert predefined shapes into your worksheet, or draw your own.

NewDraw is a graphics application to make your own drawings or illustrations.

It is pretty simple to get used to and works like any simple drawing software,

for example, Paintbrush in Windows.

Internet and communication

NewDeal has a Web browser called SkipperSE, and a communication package

called NewComm. The browser supports frames and DHTML pages. You can also view

the source for a Web page. NewComm is a communications package to connect your

computer to the Internet using a modem. Putting this package on the network is

not simple, and it has extensive descriptions in its help for doing so.

Computer management

Newmanager is an application that gives you a central location from where you

can access all drives and folders on your computer. You can then do things like

copying, and renaming files and directories. It also lets you format your

drives.

Directory Lister is a very basic application that displays the contents of a

drive or directory you choose. Once displayed you can copy and paste the

listings into other applications or even print them.

Accessories

The calculator allows you to do simple mathematical calculations. It also has

scientific calculator features for things like exponential calculations and

factorials. An interesting feature of the calculator is worksheets for common

calculations. These are divided into four groups of household, retail store,

statistical functions, and financial calculations. Each of these groups has many

worksheets in which you just have to enter the values and you will get your

result. For example, the financial calculations group has a worksheet called

compound rate in which you have to enter the present value, future value, and

the number of years, and it will give you the required compound interest.

Character Map is a very useful utility that displays the complete set of

characters available in a font. This can be useful if you need a specific

character such as an under-root and don’t know its keyboard shortcut. You can

copy it from here and paste it in your document. For example if you select

under-root, then it displays Ctrl+Alt+v.

NewDex is basically an address book to store names, addresses, and phone

numbers of your contacts. You can easily search for any contact, print any

contact, which is useful for creating labels. If you have a modem, it will also

dial the number of any selected contact.

NewPlanner lets you schedule your daily events so you don’t forget your

meetings or appointments. You can schedule events for a day, a week, or even the

whole month. You can also set it to remind you before the event is actually

supposed to occur. For example, if you have a meeting at 2 pm then you can set

it to remind you 15 minutes before the meeting. Once set up, even if you are

working on a different application, it will prompt you with a message reminder.

Games

You don’t have to wait for the morning newspaper to dig into a crossword

anymore. You can do one right on your computer. Though it has only five

categories, each crossword is pretty big. You can also save your crossword and

continue with it later. NewDeal also has the game Solitaire.

Other utilities

File Finder is a very useful utility to search for files on your hard drive.

You can use wild card characters and specify the drive and the directory to

search.

Scrapbook, as the name suggests, is a place to keep bits and pieces of

information, which you use often. For example, your address or a graphics file

such as your company’s logo, which you need to use frequently can be placed in

the scrapbook. You can then assign names to each piece of scrap, which makes it

easy to retrieve again.

This is a very simple utility like Notepad in Windows to type in small bits

of information. You can also open text files for editing and printing.

Media Viewer is a graphics program that lets you view BMP, PCX, and GIF files

only. You can copy these images and paste them in NewWrite or NewDraw. You can

zoom in and out to view images at different percentages of their original size.

You can also quickly find out information such as height, width, and file size

of your image.

Applications in NewDeal are stored with reference to the World folder, which

resides in the NDE directory. A lot of third-party applications are available at

www.newdealinc.com that can also be

installed. For this, you just need to copy the GEO files into the World folder.

The rest is up to your own exploration.

Ashish Sharma and Sachin Makhija