DESQview was absolutely not crashy. I ran several different types of BBS software in it without issues. The "DESQview (or worse...)" comment raised the hair on the back of my neck. DESQview was revolutionary at the time and I was annoyed at having to use Windows many years later.

ASCII windows may not have been everyone's cup of tea but I loved it.

I recall running Opus (or maybe the predecessor whose name escapes me) under DESQview on my lousy XT clone. I don’t recall it being crashy but it certainly didn’t have enough horsepower to handle the BBS software and an interactive DOS window.

I couldn’t afford a second machine in those days and having to sacrifice my one and only PC for the full-time BBS wasn’t fun :)

> DESQview was revolutionary at the time and I was annoyed at having to use Windows many years later.

I remember running Win3.11 with-in a DESQview window (and IIRC there was a full-screen mode as well).