Can your old 8088 or 286 run the MacOS, or Windows?  Not in this lifetime. (OK, OK, older versions of Windows will run even on an 8088, and Win 3.1 is technically capable of running on a 286. Don't write me letters correcting me, do something constructive and send me a copy of Windows 1.0; and keep in mind that Windows before 3.0 was just a DOS File Manager with file association.) Still, the basic appeal of such systems is the Graphical User Interface (GUI) -- a world of pictures, boxes, and mousable icons that keep you from the unappealing DOS command line (better known as C:\>). Now that you can have even on your 8088, in the form of a DOS Menu System.  A menu system provides a graphical "shell" between you and the spartan command line, with a number of options for you to click on. And since most of these menu systems were written 5 to 10 years ago, they are well-suited to the limited powers of an old 8088. In particular, most of them don't stay resident in the computer's memory when you start one of your programs. That's good, since an old computer won't have a lot of memory to spare.  (Windows, by contrast, sucks up memory, on top of the memory your programs use.)  There are approximately a million old menu systems floating around; here I list a few I've tried out.

A really cool menu that takes up very little disk space (about 40K), and (optionally) uses no RAM when running other programs, is MOO, written by Harry Gensler. It has a very nice interface, with drop-down menus just like Windows programs; capacity to take up to 500 program entries; impressive and easy to use color configuration; password protection for sub-menus (program groups) and individual programs; a variety of built-in screensavers using only ASCII characters, including a configurable message; and ability to search for programs on the disk and construct the menu items for you. It offers both mouse and keyboard controls. (Yes, your 8088/286 may be able to use a mouse!) Best of all, MOO is absolutely free.

Another menu system which I've found fairly nice and easy-to-use is Ultimenu. It allows 18 sub-menus (program groups), each capable of holding 18 programs, each individually password-protectable; plus it provides several built-in desk utilities: a clock, calendar, "Rolodex"-style phone & address book (with phone dialer), a DOS "File Manager," customizable text-string screen saver, and even a nice slide-show tutorial on how it all works. It works with or without a mouse. Ultimenu is shareware, as the nag screen makes clear. You can download it from ZDNet.

For considerably more eye-candy in a DOS menu system, check out Quikmenu, which offers a nice 3-D interface, allows you to set desktop graphics (a centered or tiled .pcx file), has its own built-in utilities (clock, calculator, phonebook/dialer, file manager and text editor), password protection, and several cool screensavers. Quikmenu can be used with or without a mouse, and even lets you import icons as .ico files (hence permitting use of Windows icons). I've got it running on a 286 with an EGA monitor, and it looks very cool indeed. Since the only requirement listed is DOS 5.0, I'm guessing it'll even run on an 8088 (though slowly -- as if that needs saying). Quikmenu is shareware, as the nag screen makes clear.