From: TW.FY4@isumvs.iastate.edu (Timothy I Miller)
Subject: Re: OS/2 VS NT! The Future War Looms...
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 03:48:25 GMT

In Article <1992Sep14.042311.18756@fcom.cc.utah.edu>,
brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
>
>In short, of the 1,250,000 currently probably only a quarter or a third
>are actually in use.  After a successful bug fix release this percentage
>might grow to two thirds.  A better percentage than Window 3.X to be sure.
>This of course assumes that the bug fix release will actually be
>BETTER.  My bet is they've rushed it yet again. Certainly I've had
>word from inside IBM that makes me suspect this.  The recent rumor
>posted here that the Windows 3.1 compatibility won't be there till later
>supports this too.
>

Come on Brian!  Where did this figure come from?  I haven't heard
anything like this from anybody except you!  This is pure
speculation, and doesn't seem to be based on anything except your
need to hear that Win NT won't fail (selective attention).  You're
entitled to your speculations, of course, but please try to be
realistic.

>>all that would happen is that people would see that OS/2 costs $150, NT
>>costs $500.  OS/2 is competing with DOS+Windoze, rather more than it is
>>with NT (especially at the moment :-)).
>
>NT does not cost $500... this is certain... all Microsoft has said
>is that it will cost less than $500.  This of course COULD be $499... but
>two things are certain.
>
>Secondly, Microsoft has said that they will work with clone makers
>(remember all those fellows that ship with Windows 3.X at the moment?)
>to have bundling arrangements such that high-end systems come
>with NT.  This means that many users will be able to pick up
>NT for "free".  I also believe that this an indication that NT
>will be available for much cheaper than $499 -- even
>if the list price is $499.
>

Does this mean that I won't be able to buy a computer system unless
I want an ancient OS (DOS) or a useless OS (since I won't have any
NT apps!)?  Almost sounds like the strangle hold MS has on the
vendors already...

>
>At home I'd like Multimedia and File/Printer sharing.  Under OS/2 the
>cheapest was to get this is to get the TCP/IP base kit + NFS and the
>MM extensions:  Cost under OS/2: $195 (OS/2 list price) + $149 multimedia
>+ 200 (TCP/IP base) + ~100 TCP/IP NFS add-on = $644.  Even if all
>you want is OS/2 + Multimedia, you get $344... and there is not yet anything
>that says that NT's list price won't be lower than that.
>In fact I'm betting NT will list in the $250-$350 range... but obviously
>that is speculation.
>

Well, let's see...  My OS/2 cost me $49 as an upgrade from Windows.
MMPM/2 can be bought from IBM for $125 (part #04G3367).  Yeah I
guess this add up to about $344.  BTW, windows didn't cost me
anything, since it's shipped with so many different products.  My
total cost would equal $174 (+tax).  Of course, I haven't bought the
MMPM/2 extensions, since I'm hoping the will come down even further
in price.

>
>I've already used a beta of Corel Draw for NT.  Lotus doesn't make anything
>that Microsoft doesn't have a better version of (though I have
>heard good things about a presentation package from Lotus).
>Oh, I've also seen  NT betas of FrameMaker and Visual Basic.
>(These were at the _July_ NT dev conf.)
>NT's stackable device driver structure should make things like Stacker
>quite trivial to do.
>

This is a very subjective approach.  I have used both W4W and Ami
Pro, and like Ami Pro *much* better because of it's ease of adding
and manipulating graphics.  I haven't used Excel, because 123 does
everything I need (thought I'd include this, just in case you've
always been wondering what kind of person uses Ami Pro and 123
:-)  ).

Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy