ScalOS
As the title suggests, this is yet another Workbench
replacement, similar in concept to MBench. It takes a rather
different approach than the previous by requiring Magic User
Interface or BGUI just to run the software. Although many have
criticised MUI for its slowness, in my opinion there really is no
reason why modern Amigas cannot use it. It may use a lot of memory
but it is pretty and allows more customisation than Workbench
alone. The standard Amiga is no longer a 512k A500 is it?
ScalOS reliance on MUI will mean that anyone without fast ram
need not apply. For those that do I can only say that ScalOS is
very stable and relatively bug free. It makes using Workbench a joy
to use. Simply moving icons around and watching the name underneath
move fluidly was a joy to behold! It reminded me of Windows NT in a
great many ways. My only complaints were that it didn't adopt the
WBPattern preferences, forcing you to set them with one of the
accompanying utilities. Another problem was the lack of any
pull-down menus, ScalOS forces you to define all of the menus from
scratch. The beta version also has problems with graphics cards
which loses brownie points in my book.
Although my (tiny) review raves about how good ScalOS is, I can
only ask again the point of these Workbench replacements. I'm
probably being too cynical but why would you want to replace
Workbench with some minor facelifts that could render many programs
incompatible. Although like MBench, ScalOS does an excellent job I
can't help thinking that we really need a complete replacement
operating system.
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