WINDOWS 3.0 APPEARS WORTHY OF THE EXCITEMENT IT GENERATES

No event in the computer industry has generated more excitement than last month's introduction of Microsoft Windows 3.0.

This is one time the hype may be justified.The latest version of Microsoft's graphical user interface is designed to make computers easier to use by replacing an arcane set of commands with a simple drawing of a desktop.

To run a program or open a document, all you have to do is use a mouse to point at a picture of it and click a button. All programs designed for Windows basically work the same way. So you do not have to learn 10 different sets of function keys and menus to switch from a word processor to a spreadsheet to a database program.

If you have a heavy-duty, International Business Machines-compatible personal computer, Windows will break the 640K memory barrier that has plagued users for years. It can run Windows programs and non-Windows programs simultaneously, letting you switch from one to another with a keystroke.

Apple Macintosh users have had many of these capabilities for years, and Windows 3 is Microsoft's third attempt to bring this attractive environment to PC users.

Earlier versions of Windows suffered from speed and design problems. Part of this has to do with the nature of IBM-compatible computers. While the Macintosh was designed from the ground up as a computer with a graphical interface, the PC was not. What the Mac can do with hardware, the PC has to emulate through software. This eats up the computer's processing power long before it can begin to do anything useful.

The first two versions of Windows were, at best, pale imitations of the Macintosh. They were slow and not particularly attractive. Still they were easier to use than native DOS commands, and over the past few years Windows began to pick up a following.

Windows 3.0 solves most of these problems. It is visually stunning and intuitive. And amazingly, it works. To write this column, I started up Windows and used it to launch Sprint, my favorite word processor. Sprint is not specifically designed to run under Windows.

But before I did that, I also started up Windows Paint, a graphics program; Procomm Plus, a communications program; Microsoft's QuickBasic language compiler, a Windows word processor called Ami (which I will discuss in another column), and Microsoft Works, a non-Windows program that includes word processing, spread-sheet, database and communications.