From: "bill dehaan" <bill.dehaan@canrem.com>
Subject: os/2 at comdex
Reply-To: "bill dehaan" <bill.dehaan@canrem.com>
Organization: Canada Remote Systems
Distribution: comp
Date: 13 Dec 92 14:32:32 EST

In message <1992Nov29.192850.23447#fcom.cc.utah.edu>,
brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:

[regarding OS/2 1.x apps indicating support for OS/2 2.0]

BS>This is not the point, and worse you know it.  I see a great deal of reluctan
BS>on the part of vendors that made OS/2 1.X apps to put out 2.0 versions,
BS>despite the fact one gets an immediate performance boost from doing so.
BS>I see no such reluctance for vendors to adopt new features from Windows
BS>3.1 and the strong showing for Windows NT shows me that this will carry
BS>over to Win32 apps as well.

Case in point: I just called Mortice Kern Systems, asking about the new
version (4.1) of the MKS toolkit. I have had the MKS toolkit for DOS
since about 1985 or so, and OS/2 since its' inception in 1987. When I
asked about the OS/2 upgrade I was told that there was no OS/2 release
of the update, but they would still sell the old v3.2 (OS/2 16 bit) if I
wanted. That's what I already have. When asked why, the salesdroid told
me that MKS got badly burned with OS/2 in the past (believable), and
besides, they were devoting all of their energy to (you guessed it)
Windows/NT.

Now, these guys have very legitimate reasons for doing this. Not the
least of which is they are heavily into Posix, which NT is attempting to
conform to. But the simple fact is, this company which currently sells
an OS/2 version of their product is _not_ interested in supporting OS/2
v2.0.

What scares me when people start including OS/2 v1.x applications in the
list of OS/2 products (without labelling them as such) is that it is
presenting a biased view of the real situation out there.

Before the flames start: I work with a number of OS'es (OSs?) at work
and at home. My current desktop at work is a Sun IPX running Solaris; my
January contract will be using a NextStation, my last contract was with
Windows 3.1 and OS/2, and we are evaluating both the NT beta and DV/X at
work. I recently switched my home machine from OS/2 v2 to Win31 back to
OS/2 v2 again; so I have a reasonably good idea of what the systems are
like "hands-on".

Unfortunatley, while the base OS is very nice, OS/2 still suffers from
the classic problems of lack of drivers and application support.
Pointing out that Windows 3.0 had the same problems is meaningless; that
was three years ago, and Windows had no competitor for the desktop at
the time. OS/2 is fighting an entrenched force that has superior
numbers, better logistics, and the resources for an extended battle. I
was reading in PC Week that IBM has a long term OS/2 strategy; I am glad
to hear it, I just wish that they had a _short_ term strategy as well.
Given the number of times I head the "3000 applications by 4q92", I
would have expected Comdex to be PACKED with wall to all OS/2
applications; that wasn't the case.

I really hope IBM gets on the ball before it is too late.

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