We gather from our conversations with you that many of you appear to be using Windows 3.1. We have been using it on several machines at the office and home and are finding significant productivity gains. No, we don't get a cut for marketing Windows, but we want to pass along what we've learned about working smarter.

For those of you who are using Windows, we have put a PIF and icon on the Bulletin Board for you to use. We have experimented with different settings on the PIF and continue to experiment to find the best values for optimum use. TMODEL2.PIF and TMODEL2.ICO are zipped together for downloading as TM2WIN.ZIP.

This is what we have learned to date. In early experiments with memory managers such as QEMM 386MAX and EMM386, included with DOS 5.0, we have found that model runs take anywhere from 1.5 to 3 times longer. Typically you would not notice the speed difference with any other program that you are using interactively as the user response time is greater than the computer time. However, with a model run that is only performing computations, the speed degradation is noticeable. Because Windows performs memory management and other functions, model runs are also slower. If you are in a hurry or are running a large model, it is probably worth the effort to go back to DOS before starting the simulation run. However, in our consulting projects, we typically leave the computer in Windows for the run. Although this is slower, it allows the computer to be used for other tasks if necessary. I have stressed "if necessary." The PIF that is on the bulletin board is set so that background tasks are not allowed and TMODEL2 is not set to run in the background. Of course, this can be changed to suit your preferences and working style. I have set the Foreground Priority to 10000 so that even if other tasks are operating, the majority of the time is given to TMODEL2 if it is in the foreground.

If your graphics appear to work in slow motion make sure you have not checked one of the monitor port options. These appear to really slow down anything involving graphics. Your graphics board may require one of these to be checked, but so far none of ours do.

The real productivity gains come when you are able to task switch. Using the ALT-TAB key allows you to cycle through all of your active applications. One way we have used Windows to make our TMODEL2 work faster is to have multiple instances (start up TMODEL2 in more than one window) with different views of the same model. For example, you may have one window with the base network data and counts, one with the model run results, and one displaying errors greater than allowable. You can then check the areas that need further calibration work and make the necessary changes right away on the base data files.