From: jmalloy@itsmail1.hamilton.edu (Joseph T. Malloy)
Subject: Re: os2 what good is it?
Organization: Hamilton College - Clinton, NY
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 22:45:03 GMT

In article <GHENNIGA.93Jan27113241@ampere.NMSU.Edu> ghenniga@NMSU.Edu writes:
>>>
>>Ditto here.  The odd app that does crash (usually a truly odd app!) is
>>easily shut down by local reboot in my experience.  I reboot my machine
>>only when I make changes to startup files or, if that doesn't occur
>>often enough, once a week, whether it needs it or not.  For many people,
>>Windows 3.1 is utterly stable.  In my case, even Windows 3.0 was stable,
>>and I've been using 3.1 for well over a year now (I beta'd) was utter
>>stability.
>
>I agree, I don't think stability is a good issue anymore. Now if you're
>running Windows 3.0 then it's a different story! Anyway, reliability
>usually has little to do with the OS and more to do with the applications
>(at least after the second release or so of the OS). Where OS/2 2.0 really
>shines is in it's crash protection! IF you do have a program that
>consistently crashes Windows what do you do? I used to reboot, reboot,
>reboot! That no longer occurs under OS/2 it just tells me there's a problem
>and pops me back to the WPS.

Well, I understand that by virtue of its design, OS/2 offers the sort of
crash-protection they advertise with that there helmet and that Windows,
while it makes some attempts to isolate apps from each other, cannot do
so completely and reliably.

That having been said, however, I'd add the Win 3.1 is nonetheless more
stable for me than OS/2 2.0 GA was.  Indeed, local reboot usually works
just fine.  And I simply have never wanted to use an application that
crashes consistently, as that seems rather counterproductive to me
(either reboot locally or globally under Windows or close it, open it
again under OS/2...you're still not getting work done regardless!).  

>	Even if crashes are not an issue with you, have you ever printed a
>30 page or so document (including heavy graphics) from Windows? This is
>REALLY what converted me! I just can't understand why my 486/33 HAS to be
>completely useless while it does something like print? Don't know about
>anyone else but watching a dialog box spit out page numbers for 10-15
>minutes isn't my idea of an advanced OS. Of course there's the good old
>floppy issue also...Why must something with a 486 processor be a huge paper
>weight for the 5 minutes or so it takes to format a floppy. Unless the
>manufacturer of the floppy drive is doing some fantastic stuff I haven't
>met a floppy drive yet that needs 100% of the CPU to format it's media!

Yes, I print large documents (though I tend to go for font variety in
both size and look more so than graphics, which really aren't needed or
wanted in my case) all the time while reading mail in the background
with a 9600 bps connection.  I do have a ram disk for spooling (4 MB) so
that helps a lot.  And the other day, in my more or less annual 'format
floppy extravaganza,' I accomplished that task (had a stack of about 40
3.5/1.44 MB floppies) while on line, too.  The trick under windows is
the give a DOS window a low priority (20 or so) while formatting; it's
slow and jerky at times, but it works well enough for the once-a-year I
need to do it...(This is all done on old technology: a 386/33!).

>	And finally the last reason I switched was I was tired of trying to
>use my PC to debug FORTRAN and C codes that used large data sets. I usually
>use my PC to debug such codes then port them to a workstation with a lot of
>horsepower. Under DOS (even with Windows) I'd have to completely rewrite
>portions of the code which allocated large chunks of memory simply because
>under that pair I was stuck with these 15,000 line codes that had to fit
>in 640KB, or at best 1MB, of RAM. Again, something else that was
>inconceivable to me when I had 16MB of RAM in my PC!


>	Anyway, there are reasons for sticking with DOS+Windows, in
>particular insufficient hardware. Other than that I just can't see why
>anyone would CHOOSE to stay with the pair of kludges which are DOS+Win when
>they have the hardware requirements and OS/2 is so cheap?
>
>Gary Hennigan
>---------
>PhD Student, Computational Electromagnetics
>New Mexico State University
>email: ghenniga@NMSU.Edu

This is often what I hear and have heard from OS/2ers: I had trouble
installing it because my system was 'clone crap' (I paraphrase) and,
now, here, it's insufficient.  Well, in the first place, NT installed in
45 minutes, start to finish, not a single burp along the way; I don't
think my hardware is a fault.  Secondly, OS/2 2.0 GA (2.1 may be
different, I'll have to wait and see) is unstable and runs Windows apps
quite poorly, in my experience, and dos comm apps were troublesome.
Even if that weren't true, there's still the Workplace Shell:ugly,
ungainly, awkward, confusing, and buggy.  Even with 2.1, I guess I'd
have to stick with the WPS; I guess I'll hold off until someone comes up
with something better!r

In the meantime, we all use what we prefer to use; what's wrong with
that?

Joseph T. Malloy / WB2RBA / jmalloy@hamilton.edu
Associate Professor of German / Hamilton College / Clinton, New York


Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.os2.misc