From: pshuang@athena.mit.edu (Ping-Shun Huang)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: IBM at the "Windows & OS/2 Conference"
Date: 21 Aug 92 12:28:38 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

I was at the Windows & OS/2 show at the Boston World Trade Center
yesterday. Microsoft was conspicuous by their absence -- lock, stock,
and barrel. IBM provided a large booth, with spaces for smaller ISV's
showing their products for OS/2 2.0 and a partly live, partly film
demonstration of OS/2 2.0 that looked quite good and attracted pretty
large crowds. The OS/2 2.0 logo certainly was all over the place -- just
as the poster said about IBM visibility at the Austrialian show. A
majority of the vendors were still lacking OS/2 products, but it was not
as bad as I had feared. There were a large number of attendees who
seemed to be quite enthusiastic about OS/2, and not just techies,
either, but people who use computers to do their real business work
{gasp!} and have found OS/2 2.0 to be very much to their liking.

IBM also hosted a briefing (well, two identical ones... one targeted for
the show attendees at 4pm and another for BCS members at 7pm) where Lee
Reiswig and Lois Dimpfel (Director of Personal Systems Programming
Center) spoke about IBM's OS/2 strategy and demonstrated both GA code
and in-house code. The television ad was also aired during the
production. The briefing, while it did not raise some of the same kind
of energy and humour and excitement as Lee's last address to the Boston
Computer Society last June (when he showed OS/2 beta code, running
native apps, DOS apps, Desqview, Windows standard mode, multimedia
games, all multitasking on the same desktop), was fairly impressive
(very well organized, plus lots of good technical special effects with
lasers and smoke machines) and made a good impression. Multimedia video
and sound integration, pen computing, transparent connections to
multiple networks on a machine with a *SINGLE* network card, and some
side-by-side comparisons were amongst the highlights.

I had a chance to ask a couple of questions during the Q&A afterwards.
Lee stated that IBM still has not finalized its distribution strategy
for the next fill-in-the-blank-here-with-your-favorite-term of OS/2 2.0.
(As a tie-in to the CD-ROM's... if IBM would make possible for those of
us who wish it to receive the next OS/2 2.0 on CD-ROM, that would
certainly save on media costs.) I talked to John Soyring about IBM's
technical support for developers, and he stated that there would be much
more that IBM is rolling out (and I told him in no uncertain terms that
that would be a very good and necessary thing). Both he and Lee seemed
tired but determined. Overall, my attendance has made me better about
OS/2 2.0. I still think it's an uphill battle, but at least it looks
like there *WILL* be a battle.

To any IBM'ers out there who can get word to people planning for future
shows (this one was a relatively minor one as industry shows go, after
all...): tell them to bring some merchandise! T-shirts would have gone
over very well if they had been available for sale.

--
Ping Huang (INTERNET: pshuang@athena.mit.edu), probably speaking for himself