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| A+ Software |
Candidates preparing for CompTIA's most popular test are sometimes surprised to find out that there are DOS based questions.
After all Microsoft told us in 1995 that Windows 95 was Microsoft Windows, not DOS. So at the time of this writing Microsoft has been saying its Windows for nine years!
The stark reality is that marketing is marketing, engineering is engineering and rarely shall the two meet. This is so pervasive there is a cartoon strip known as Dilbert which regularly pokes fun at the differences between marketing and engineering.
When you're attempting to fix a computer it is no laughing matter. The hard engineering facts are this: there are really only two Microsoft operating systems in use. They are DOS and NT. Sure, Microsoft can put a pretty face on top of DOS and that doesn't change the fact that DOS is DOS. All versions of Windows: from Windows version 1 though Windows Me are DOS, period. NT, NT 3.x NT4, Windows 2000 and Windows XP are all NT, born from OS/2.
Granted Windows Me is very difficult to prove that is DOS since it will not like to get to a command line. That does not change the fact that Windows Me like all the other Windows versions mentioned above run on DOS.
Once you have accepted the fact that you need to know DOS the question becomes where can you find a legal copy of DOS? The answer is FreeDOS, available from the web site freedos.org
I have looked at free DOS and frankly I'm pretty impressed! There are several advantages of free DOS over Microsoft DOS. The first thing that comes to mind it is free and readily available. However there is a second point to free DOS. In some ways free DOS is a better DOS then Microsoft DOS. I'm not saying Microsoft DOS was bad. I am saying they have stopped developing DOS. This is where free DOS comes in and does a better job for the modern PC.
For example on 14 Jan 2004 free DOS had released a new EMM386 program. The significant changes are there is now two versions and both of them support more than 64MB of memory. Try that with your MS-DOS!
And because free DOS is DOS you have the ability to download a great deal of documentation so you can learn DOS and get your hands dirty playing with it. Highly recommended.
As much as you would like to think otherwise it will be a long time before having intimate knowledge of how DOS works will be ancient history.
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