Netscape 4.0 Beta 1 for Win32 is out

[David Risner]

In case y'all haven't seen or heard, Netscape Communicator 4.0 Beta 1 for
Win32 (95 & NT) is available from their FTP sites.  One such site is:

ftp://ftp8.netscape.com/pub/communicator/4.0/4.0b1/windows/c32e40b1.exe

for the full version (approx. 9.4 MEGS).  A smaller version (approx. 5.5
MEGS) without all the goodies is at:

ftp://ftp8.netscape.com/pub/communicator/4.0/4.0b1/windows/n32e40b1.exe

After using it for a few hours, I've got to say it is very nice.  The mail
and news interface has been vastly improved making at least this portion of
the package at least 4 times better than the MS versions.

The browser interface has been revamped.  It seems to be better, although
not all the features have yet to be implemented.

It is beta software, so there are the ususal types of problems:  it doesn't
always repaint the screen correctly, it is slower than the release versions
usually are, and it will crash periodically.

It seems to crash every time I try to get a complete list of newsgroups from
my news server.  I've had the browser crash once; I think it was after
pushing a Javascript button.

Overall, it makes Microsoft look like an also ran in the Internet Client
business, but I'll have to see what IE4.0 looks like before I truly consider
it to be dead as far as being a quality product.
--
David G. Risner -- Network Services Administrator
Southwestern University School of Law, Los Angeles, CA
Business:drisner at swlaw.edu  Personal:drisner at mci2000.com
http://members.aol.com/dgrisner/Home.html