Subj : Charm
To   : JAHMAS
From : Donald Tidmore
Date : Fri Oct 06 2006 02:17 pm

>> There's always advantages and disadvantages to upgrading to a new version of
>>any door game.  One just has to evaluate them all and then make a decision as
>> to what to do.  Donald.
> I have 4.07 which runs slow and 3.55 patched which runs blisteringly fast!

Be sure that you understand the situation with DOS programs.  Pretty much all 
of them are (or were) written for systems that primarily ran MS-DOS, where it 
was a "given" that the one program had total access/use of the CPU. But any 
program like LORD v3.55 that runs on a multi-tasking system that runs MS 
Windows XP, for example, will hog the cpu.  As Michael Preslar has stated in 
messages this week to Sean Dennis, all of Seth's versions of LORD use 100% of 
the CPU.  So that's why it runs fast.  But if you tried to do anything else, 
such as use an Windows-based email program, it would be very slow to respond to 
anything you do.

Starting with LORD v4.06, Michael optimized LORD to behave itself and NOT 
monopolize the user's CPU.  That was further refined in LORD v4.07, which was 
released on my Birthday on June 07th.  

The question you have to ask yourself is this:  Do you want to use ONE single 
program (LORD) and have it run fast?  If so, then you already have a situation 
you like to use.  If not, you are like the majority of us. We expect and need 
our computer to do lots of stuff simultaneously.  Use web browser, use email 
program, run Microsoft Word for Windows, and so on. Perhaps you have Solitaire 
running.  But any DOS program you run, such as LORD, unless it is v4.06, v4.07, 
or v4.08 beta, will slow everything down to a crawl because of its attempt to 
monopolize the CPU.  

If you still have questions on this subject, ask Michael Preslar to discuss it 
further either here in Fidonet Lord echo, in Fidonet netmail, or via his email 
(mike at lordlegacy.com).  

Personally, I *HATED* to work on LORD programming projects for the first 
two-three years in either Windows ME or Windows XP because everything I did was 
slowed down by LORD hogging the cpu.  I'm used to having three DOS windows open 
at once, the email program running sometimes, the web browser (Firefox 
usually), Borland Pascal for Windows, Solitaire - and if LORD is running, 
unless its 4.07/4.08 beta, things get glacially slow.

Its very hard to run LORD (which one has to do to test changes in your igms as 
you work on them), BPW, and other stuff, and get much accomplished if you do 
that sort of situation using LORD v3.55 or any other version of LORD through 
4.05pb.  I know that is a fact from personal experience.

One just has to decide whether you are going to single-task on a computer or 
multi-task.  If you want to multi-task, its best if ALL of the programs you are 
running will behave themself and not hog the CPU.  Some early versions of 
Mozilla Firefox have that problem, and that also can drive one nuts at times.  
Not sure if Firefox v1.5.0.7 still does the cpu hogging.

Anyway, that's the situation with LORD being blistering fast in v3.55, and very 
slow with v4.07.  You just have to decide which situation you want - 
single-tasking or multi-tasking.  The rest is up to you. Donald

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