Generic windows with small w are a feature of most GP computer systems I have met.

Windows (tm) the Mac-like interface offered as a shell for the venerable MS-DOS version of Digital Research's CP-M (no, no, only joking really, Windows is an all new technology and MS DOS owed nothing to Gary Kildall and CP-M worth talking about) ....

Start again, Microsoft Windows, the graphical interface which is revolutionising the face of computing throughout businesses of all sorts, and throughout the executive areas of all Health Authorities (that is the layer between the workers who slave at boring screens all day, the workers, and the people who are too important to have computers The Executives) , but is rather too expensive to be applied to the day to day business of those dealing with patients... Nah, too sarkie...

Start again,
Most of the computing world uses MS Windows, those who don't use X, Motif, BeOS, OS/2 MacOS, RiscOS for Acorn or something involving point and tap with a pen and it all looks very much the same as Windows, ish.

What features of the OS/2 alike interface do we want in clinical systems?

Well, all of them especially the pinging sound and the animated cursors, hone down a little, what bits are useful

1. It is likely to be familiar to people who have been trained expensively by London and Manchester and then come to work for me. Training in the NHS is appallingly funded and little done, taking advantage of other people's efforts is a good reason to spend rather less than the cost of a two day course in elementary MUMPS driving on buying a copy of Word the person is used to.

2. The Windows clipboard (or the OS/2 clipboard or etc) Although my informal study shows that about half of those people who consider themselves skilled multitasking power users who are at home with Windows and therefore know everything they need about computers do not remember that Ctrl C copies and Ctrl V pastes.... they may one day learn and when they do they will agree that the clipboard is A Good Thing.

3. Printer support.

4. It is actually cheaper nowadays to develop in Windows. (Doubt me? Think of a problem of modest proportions and real interest. You code it in M and I'll code it in Visual Basic. Yours will run five times as fast as mine, the year after next. Mine chugs next week and can be hacked to shape next month) Unfair comparison of course, because I am an amateur whereas all the people who program in M are professionals - unless you know differently?

Any more candidates for use of Windows?

Does windows need Windows?

How to get the best of both worlds

It is all converging anyway, anytime soon we will start applying the term "thin client" to a copy of Procomm running on DOS on a PC. And if not, why not?.