From: sjb5@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (STACY JOHN BEHRENS)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: OS/2 2.01 Beta
Date: 11 Oct 92 18:55:54 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University

In article <1992Oct10.233432.27395@fcom.cc.utah.edu>, brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu (
Brian Sturgill) writes:
>In article <1992Oct10.220520.14135@muddcs.claremont.edu> tlilley@jarthur.clarem
ont.edu (Thomas (Ted) Lilley) writes:
>>In article <1992Oct9.210502.778@mdd.comm.mot.com> wu@mdd.comm.mot.com (Philip
Wu) writes:
>>>In <1992Oct9.171907.3735@solaris.rz.tu-clausthal.de> hochstae@allfiwib1.wiwi.
uni-marburg.de (Christoph H. Hochstaetter) writes:
>>>
>>>>DOS and WIN16 is not too good in the pre-beta SDK, but do you think,
>>>>that MS will ship the release version with poorer support for DOS &
>>>>WIN16 than OS/2 2.0 currently has?
>>>
>>>Maybe not Windows, but they already stated that DOS support won't be
>>>as good as under OS/2.  No big loss really.
>>>
>>>Phil
>>
>>I can't believe you said that, Phil.  I thought MS learned its compatibility
>>lesson along with IBM...i.e. OS/2 1.x.  Well, it doesn't really matter whaat
>>we think the importance of DOS support is.  The market will tell us whether
>>it is or isn't important, sometime next year.
>>
>>Ted
>
>I doubt seriously that OS/2 1.X's main problem was poor DOS support.
>OS/2 1.X had many, many problems.  It was designed for 286's but
>required huge amounts of resources (1.3 was an exception, but OS/2 by
>then had a bad rep... and there was Windows 3.0).  It was buggy.  It
>was slow.  It had no applications base.  It was highly proprietary and
>cost a lot.  It ran (or so most everybody believed) only on IBM's
>over-priced, under-powered hardware.

You may doubt it, but you would be wrong.  That was the single biggest
sticking point with the 1.x versions.  The DOS compatibility stunk, and no one
was willing to through away all or even some of their stuff to run a system
that could in most cases barely fit on the larger systems of the day.
>
>NT's DOS support will be better than 1.X's -- IBM's OS/2 2.0 support, while
>good for some, is more of an overreaction by a frighten bureacracy, than
>a well thought out feature.  Consider also the testing/maintenace burden
>IBM is picking up for OS/2 2.0 -- DOS -- even down to the hardware
>bits level, Windows 2.X, 3.X, Win32s, Win32.  It's possible in the
>near future that OS/2 may run well everyone else's apps, but it mainly
>means there is less incentive for people to make apps for the small 2.0
>native market.

Wrong again.  OS/2's support is necissary for its survival until its own apps
start getting here in bigger quantities.  I myself would not have bought it if
its DOS/Win support was significantly worse.  Further, when did IBM even hint
at supporting Win32?  They haven't and shouldn't.  I have heard something
about them supporting Win32s, but that may very well be a net rumor.  IBM
doesn't need to really support mcuh beyond what they already have.  What is
supports right now is enough to get its foot in the door and ease the
transition.  Besides, NT is trying to support everything under the sun as
well, and isn't going to even trying to fully support 16-bit stuff.  That makes
it much less attractive.  Also, if everyone starts making Win32s apps, which
are supposed to run under 3.1, then that sort of reduces the incentive to buy
NT doesn't it?  Of course it doesn't really, but the arguement is just as
stupid as the one you put out there.
>
>Further the large number of subsystems + IBM's need to maintain its
>reputation for supporting old features for a long period of time, will
>mean that OS/2 development will lag more modern OS's. The back-
>compatibility burden will be huge.  The amount of back-compatibility
>also means a large overhead in disk space needs, more complicated installation,
>and more complexity in the subsystem APIs, and even the WPS in order to
>support it all.  Worse Windows 3.X, Win32s, and Win32 are moving targets...
>OS/2 2.0 developer's main jobs will be simply keeping up.
>Any major new feature in OS/2 will have to be geared to be compatible with
>the other platforms.  Imagine they have to support two of many things already!
>Two font systems, two multimedia systems, two sets of printer drivers.
>What seems like a good idea at the moment, will quickly become a burden.
>IBM would better spend its time recruiting ISV support.
>
While they have done this in the past, OS/2 2.0 flies right in the face of
this arguement.  If they were currently so hell bent for keeping old features,
then OS/2 2.0 would probablly have some way to run on 286s.  And in case you
have forgotten, NT has significantly higher overhead than OS/2.  But that was
just a convienent oversight wasn't it?  The market is going to force NT to
keep similair mountains of backwards compatibility and thus it will swell at a
similair rate.  Also, again, where did IBM even claim that they were going to
support all versions of Win?  They haven't.  Please remember that even when it
isn't so convienent.  If they had to support two sets of everything, then
wouldn't they have done much more already?  The only increase in the number of
printer drivers that I have seen for example is one added disk on a beta.  Ohh
how will they ever manage?

>While all users expect their past investment not to disappear immediately,
>experience in the Macintosh community shows that most apps still working
>after a major upgrade is sufficient.  Word from contacts inside Microsoft
>seem to indicate that DOS support in the beta is already well above the
>acceptable level.  (Only a few more days till the beta ships!!!)

That's nice.  We'll be the judge of that.  And besides, that depends entirely
on what you consider acceptable.  How about 16 bit Windows support?  That had
better be there too.
>
>Brian
>--
>C. Brian Sturgill                I strongly encourage you to read Ross Perot's
>University of Utah                             United We Stand
>Center for Software Science             How we can take back our country.
>brian@cs.utah.edu; CIS: 70363,1373  (It's more important than OS/2 vs NT! :-))
>
-- 
Stacy John Behrens
*===)-------------
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy