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