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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.games-l
Date:         Tue, 5 Jan 1993 10:33:20 -0500
Reply-To:     Good Ol' Dave <ADAMETZ_DAL@CCSUA.CTSTATEU.EDU>
From:         Good Ol' Dave <ADAMETZ_DAL@CCSUA.CTSTATEU.EDU>
Subject:      OS/2 2.0 GRIPES

  I guess I'm the odd man out, for I'm pretty disappointed with OS/2 2.0.
Except for the multiple sessions, there's not really much that it offers
over Windows;

  The same clean drag-and-drop desktop of OS/2 is supplied with Norton
Desktop for Windows, in addition to all those tools such as the disk drive
and shredder icons;

  The multiple sessions are not as concurrent as IBM says they are, for the
foreground session still gets the lion's share of system resources, just like
every other GUI.  If you want to illustrate this, try playing something in
Adlib's Jukebox program in a background session and see what happens.

  There are VERY few OS/2 programs on the market, and what few there are
are usually prohibitively expensive.  This forces the user to use DOS
and Windows programs.  Well, why not just use the Windows they're designed
for?

  Windows programs are designed to work hand-in-hand with each other (Excel
routing cell calculations to Word documents, etc).  Do existing OS/2 programs
have this flexibility?

  OS/2 has this ANNOYING habit of loading up the last thing you were using
the previous time.  If this program just happens to make your system crash,
resetting the computer will only cause OS/2 to load up that program and cause
the computer to crash again!  It took me a while to find out how to get around
this, which reminds me...

  Unless you tell it otherwise, by default OS/2 programs are minimized to
a folder instead of the desktop, which forces you to go out and hunt for the
thing.

  The documentation for OS/2 is pathetic; the printed material is close
to nonexistant.  However, all docs are stored on disk, which forces you to 1)
use up at least 15 meg of your hard drive, and 2) forces you to print it out
on lots and lots of YOUR paper if you want a hard copy.  I hear that IBM
recently released the proper documentation for OS/2 (for a nominal fee, of
course...).

  IBM is once again throwing a "We didn't invent it, so we'll pretend it
doesn't exist" temper tantrum by having it's BMPs and other support files
in a format of it's own, incompatible with the rest of the world, and
vice-versa.  Granted, this is trivial, but I LIKE my BMP's.

  OS/2 is compatible with SOME monitors, but not ALL monitors (namely, Super
VGA monitors like MINE).  I'm told the new graphic engine will correct this,
but I have no intention of shelling out $25.00 or whatever for what is
essentially a bug fix.

  For compatibility, the only DOS program that I really had any problem running
are resource hungry games like Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, which refused
to load, but I suspect that it is merely a matter of not enough RAM.  Has anyone
ever run this game under OS/2?


  Granted, we all have our own favorite GUIs like we have our own favorite
colors, but I just had to give an opposing viewpoint to round out this
discussion, don't ya know...


                                          Cheers,

                                          Good Ol' Dave


___________________________________   ______________________________________
\                                  \  \                                     \
 \  ADAMETZ_DAL@CCSUA.CTSTATEU.EDU  \  \  "I'd rather be rich than stupid!"  \
  \__________________________________\  \_____________________________________\

      Disclaimer:  all of the opinions previously mentioned are strictly my
      own unless I'm going to be sued, in which case they're someone else's.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU