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Hi,

from what I've read on riscos.com, RISC OS Six seems to be available as a straight buy - without Select membership.

But... should I?

Can anyone tell me what (if any) advantages from a user's point of view Six has over 4.39?

Regards,

Jochen

There are a lot of improvements in RISC OS 6, not least that it's faster, has much better filer handling, proper keyboard shortcuts for filer operations. Latest versions also have filer toolbars, which are very useful. There is support for 64,000 colour modes, which are a lot nicer than the normal RISC OS 32,000 colour modes. Paint has a lot more features and can save out as GIF etc. Foreign file import is much improved etc etc. There are a vast number of improvements.

I think RISC OS 6 is well worth it, but then having been involved with it's development I am biased

Thanks for the info - I just bought two copies for my netbookand my notebook.

Regards,

Jochen

Do you mean RO6 in VA? What is the cost of it, from where, please? Wait I'll google it.

Select 5i2 from http://www.riscos.com I see.
So what's the process of installing it to run in Virtual Acorn?

Brian

Unless you are a Select member, this..

http://www.riscos.com

...would be a better link; from here you can buy a CD or a download version of 6.14, and then have a number of weeks to decide whether to join the Select scheme for an additional 50 UKP - and receive 6.16.
(From today's experience so far, I'd recommend the CD version; the download link "will expire after 10 attempts"; so far I've tried seven times without the tiniest hint of success - six downloads didn't even start, the seventh aborted after progressing at a snail's pace for a number of minutes.)

Regards,

Jochen

Hello, Brian,

I just joined the Select scheme, which gave me v. 6.20 instead of 6.14.

Installation is extremely simple: RO 6 is softloaded over RO 4; in theory, therefore, you can still use RO4, because holding down "Z" during the Boot procedure skips the soft loading of RO6; however, when I tried this, I got a number of error messages about stuff - mostly modules - that was incompatible with RO4.



To install...

0. Obtain the RO6 CD or, if you opt for the Download, burn the ISO image you just downloaded to CD.

1. Make a backup of your VA installation.

2. Open the CD's Root and go to "New Users".

3. Run the installer.

4. Click your way through lots of boxes which let you decide what to install. (New !Edit? Maestro?....?

5 Re-Boot.

6. Enjoy.

7. Tie upsome loose ends - for example, your old !Boot is renamed to Bootxxxx (xxxx showing, I think, the time of day of the install), and the contents of the Tasks directory remain in that location.

Regards,

Jochen

P.S. I've got two VA installations (on a Win XP netbook and a Win 7 notebook); both installations of RO6 worked without a hitch, but, as usual, Win 7 does give a bit of trouble; when I press <Ctrl><Shift><F12> and click "Off", this works normally on XP, but on Win 7 I get "Application may have gone wrong...".(Reason: Message block is too big or not a multiple of 4), though after a click on "Continue" the shutdown appears to progress correctly.