HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: sjb5@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (STACY JOHN BEHRENS)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: MS ready to release 32-bit Word & Excel?!?! Read on...
Date: 10 Oct 92 19:54:47 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University

In article <hatton.718256232@cgl.ucsf.edu>, hatton@socrates.ucsf.edu (Tom Hatton
) writes:
>goyal@utdallas.edu (Mohit K. Goyal) writes:
>>I am *very* curious to see how NT will run under 8megs.  I get the
>>impression from your message that 8megs is the minimum requirements,
>>and we all now how well any OS runs under its minimum config.
>
>>Will it be fully capable with 8megs, or will it have different "levels"
>>like Windows has.
>
>>Anyways, if it doesn't run well under 8megs, then I'm sure a bunch
>>of people won't go for it if only because most motherboards have
>>8 SIMM sockets on them and going from 4 to 8 is no big deal, but
>>going from 8 to 16(the smallest leap possible) will involve selling
>>all the 1megs SIMMS and buying 4megs SIMMS.
>
>Well, not to bolster NT, but think of it this way - NT is still using the
>Windows 'face' - progman, etc. This takes way less memory than WPS in
>OS/2, of course because it *does* way less (and, personal opinion,
>is clumsier to work with). So, I expect if IBM can make WPS work well
>on a 4Mb system by some tuning, there is no reason to deny NT (using
>the Win look) to do well in 8Mb.

There is one problem with this logic.  What makes NT big is not its shell.  NT
has a lot of features, which take a lot of space.  The shell is just the
icing.  I will be much more pleased with MS if they can get it to work well in
8 megs.

>Of course, once NT acquires an OO
>interface, then we'll see what the requirements are, and I suspect
>that will go up, but no doubt MS will have gone to school on the WPS
>and refinements. So, it may end up with reasonable requirements,
>especially when you consider the time by which NT will gain an OO
>interface. The definition of "reasonable" will have moved upwards
>substantially by then. :-)
>
This is one of the other big stumbling blocks of NT.  MS should have invested
the time to make a shell worthy of the system.  I'm all for consistancy in
look and feel, but not at the expense of useablility.  Releasing the GUI a
year or more after the system, will not help to endear NT to a big chunk of
the potential users.  (Though it probably won't affect its success too much.)
MS really missed out on this point though.
>Tom
>

-- 
Stacy John Behrens
*===)-------------
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: xtifr@netcom.com (Chris Waters)
Subject: Re: Bundling Networks, OS/2 v. NT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 21:43:13 GMT

In <mX2JsB1w165w@gnct.com> garyng@gnct.com (garyng) writes:

>xtifr@netcom.com (Chris Waters) writes:

>> A more cogent point might be:  why not a version of OS/2 2.0 that omits
>> the Windoze support.  At the same price as a Windoze upgrade.  This
>> would actually make some sense, as IBM wouldn't have to pay MS the
>> royalties.  I would have bought a Windoze-less OS/2 in a flash!!  I not
>> only don't want MS's piece of crap on my system, I resent the fact that
>> it came on the floppies.  :-)

>I would say OS2 2.0 with no WPS, please give me the interface in 1.3. Well
>you can choose to not install window support but WPS ... well.

Well, you do have to install it, but you don't have to use it.  I'm not.
I have an extra couple of meg free as a result, too!

This thread is probably more appropriate in c.o.o.misc, but I'm too lazy
to move it right now.
-- 
Chris Waters    | the insane don't | NOBODY for President!
xtifr@netcom.COM| need disclaimers | Because Nobody's perfect!!
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: xtifr@netcom.com (Chris Waters)
Subject: Re: OS/2 2.01 Beta
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 02:28:02 GMT

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?

>Well, I really can't imagine that

Whether you can imagine it or not, that is exactly what MS has
announced.  They have said that NT will "only support the top 100 DOS
apps, and the top 100 Win apps" (does anyone still have a copy of this
press release from MS they can post or forward to me?).  The trade-off
is supposed to be:  you get better protection and process control from
NT.  Seems reasonable enough to me; I might even be willing to make that
trade-off when NT is released.

In any case, it may be a moot point.  At the rate MS is moving, DOS may
actually have time to finally die before NT is ever released.  :-)
-- 
Chris Waters    | the insane don't | NOBODY for President!
xtifr@netcom.COM| need disclaimers | Because Nobody's perfect!!
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539)
Subject: Re: Bundling Networks, OS/2 v. NT
Organization: Texas Instruments Inc
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 15:40:10 GMT

In <1992Oct11.134647.5784@ais.com> bruce@ais.com (Bruce C. Wright) writes:

>Sigh.  The problem is that different people are interested in different
>feature sets.  If you unbundle them ALL, then the extra costs of
>distribution and marketing become significant, both for the vendor
>and the customer.  If you include them ALL, then you may sell more
>copies of the package as a whole, and the per-unit costs of any one
>feature go down for both the vendor and the customer.  I seriously
>doubt that the development costs of TCP/IP for NT would be very large
>relative to the development costs of the entire system (read: barely
>visible).  How much would I guess that it increases the development
>cost of NT, per copy?  _Maybe_ a few cents.

If it's really that cheap and easy to do bug-free comm software, you'd
think we'd be up to our armpits in it and it would be real cheap to
buy.  That doesn't seem to be the case.

>Why did I have to pay for Rexx when I bought OS/2?  I don't want to
>pay for features I'm not interested in either ... can I buy a copy of
>OS/2 without Rexx at a discount???

An OS without a CLI is probably a non-starter, insofar as arguments
about 'bundling' go.

>Please let's not talk about non-issues.

Why is it a 'non-issue', other than the fact that NT is still in the
'non-product' category?

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
From: tdbear@tandon.com (Tom Barrett)
Subject: Re: PowerPC or (P5 & P6)?
Organization: Tandon Corporation, Moorpark, CA
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 17:22:40 GMT

In article <1992Oct6.015224.26561@adobe.com> pngai@adobe.com (Phil Ngai) writes:
>
>What would the basis for a lawsuit be? If IBM is allowed to
>sell their cloned 486s as part of a board and they are doing
>so, where is the problem? 

It depends on what the *intent* of the agreement was...
Intel's strategy has been to go for the intent angle if the
wording in the agreement does not support their case.

This sounds like a strange item to put in the agreement to
begin with.  I'm assuming that IBM put it in there to do what
AMD and others have done with their PQFP sample parts... put
them on a little PC board which is the same size and has the
same physical connector as the PGA version.  Intel will most
likely argue that they were "tricked" into this language...
sure they were :)
-- 
Tom Barrett (TDBear)    tdbear@tandon.com          voice: 805-378-6207
Tandon Corporation      609 Science Drive          Moorpark, CA  93021 
Sr. HW Design Engineer  "War is Peace, No is Yes, And We're All Free!" 
-=>NOTE:  The feed to tdbear@tandon.com may be interrupted in Sept.<=-
From: rvaniwaa@copper.denver.colorado.edu (Ronald J. Vaniwaarden)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: PowerPC or (P5 & P6)? (still!!!)
Date: 7 Oct 92 17:45:12 GMT
Organization: University of Colorado at Denver

In article <1992Oct7.113943.1@wharton.upenn.edu> poe@wharton.upenn.edu writes:
>What are the other differences besides cache size?
>The bottom line is : Is it true or false that the 486SLC and 486DLC implement
>the COMPLETE i486sx instruction set? If it's true, then please explain to me
>how is it functionally different from an Intel 486sx.
>
>Phil


one of the biggest differences IMHO is that the 486slc has a 16bit path just
like the 386sx.  This cripples it quite a bit in memory access.  However, it
is (I believe) pin compatible with a 386sx and so it can be inserted in many
of the 386sx motherboards with little modification.  I see it more as a
killer 386sx than a 486. I also believe that they are working on a 32 bit
486sx clone.

--Ron
From: dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: OS/2, my final analysis.
Date: 8 Oct 92 15:04:54 GMT
Organization: New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, N.J.

In article <1992Oct6.010321.37312@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu> sjb5@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (STACY JOHN BEHRENS) writes:
>In article <1992Sep30.175139.22736@solaris.rz.tu-clausthal.de>, ch@sg1502.chemie.uni-marburg.de (Christoph H. Hochstaetter) writes:
>>I have almost no time for my development work, because I am busy to
>>install all those bugfixes and CSDs, e.g. for the C-Compiler there
>>is already CSD Level 14 for a 6 month old product and it still does
>>not work reliable.
>
>Right.  I'm going to assume the this is sacasm.

I hope so.  I mean, IBM's last CSD for OS/2 1.3 was level WR05050.  I
hope he wouldn't think that IBM released over 5,000 patches!
-- 
David Charlap         |"there aren't 50,000 things for which it's worth writing
dic5340@hertz.njit.edu| software; and the computer industry doesn't have enough
----------------------+ programmers to create that much good software.
Therefore, most of it must be worthless" -- Boris Beizer "The Frozen Keyboard"
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: jokim@jarthur.claremont.edu (John H. Kim)
Subject: Re: IBM, Microsoft, and OS/2 -- a history.
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 03:14:01 GMT

brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
>In article <1992Oct9.013136.16962@muddcs.claremont.edu> jokim@jarthur.claremont.edu (John H. Kim) writes:
>>
>>It sure sounds to me like David's right - IBM was behind 32-bit OS/2
>>long before the split.

>Then explain why there was an OS/2 1.3?  OS/2 1.3 is where the point
>of contention between MS and IBM was.  The quote you're showing is
>about OS/2 1.2.  Clearly IBM must have changed direction somewhere,
>as shortly they would be developing an OS/2 1.3 independent of
>Microsoft.

IBM could've decided to make OS/2 1.3 for a variety of reasons.
They could've had complaints from customers about major problems
with OS/2 1.2 (you seem to complain about it a lot) and decided
they had better patch it up first thing to keep their customers
happy.  They could've decided an improved 286 OS was warranted -
most of the computers in use back then were 286s.  Or you could
be right and they were afraid OS/2 2.0 would cut into their main-
frame and minicomputer market.

The point is that you claim IBM didn't want a 32-bit OS/2.  David
said IBM had been behind a 32-bit OS/2 long before the split.  And
the documented quotes I found supported David's assertion.  Do you
have any proof besides "IBM made OS/2 1.3 so they must not have
wanted an OS/2 2.0"?  Anything not written after the fact?
-- 
John H. Kim                 | (This space to be filled when I
jokim@jarthur.claremont.edu | think of something very clever 
uunet!jarthur!jokim         | to use as a disclaimer)
From: dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: MS ready to release 32-bit Word & Excel?!?! Read on...
Date: 8 Oct 92 14:43:22 GMT
Article-I.D.: njitgw.1992Oct8.144322.13264
Organization: New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, N.J.

In article <1992Oct05.190659.24067@microsoft.com> philipla@microsoft.com (Phil Lafornara) writes:
>>But I do remeber Bill Gates saying that OS/2 would be the OS of the future
>>back when MS controlled it.
>
>     And the public said "No thanks, we'll take Windows."  Bill was
>wrong.

Yes.  They didn't have a choice.  At the time OS/2 1.0 was released,
there was no GUI.  And The current version of Windows was 1.03 (I
think), and it didn't sell that well, either.  By the time OS/2 became
viable (version 1.3, IMO), Windows was entrenched (current version of
OS/2 was 1.2 when Win 3.0 was released) and MS had dropped almost all
OS/2 support.

So, of course the public is going to choose a heavilly-hyped system
with apps over a completely unknown system that wasn't even advertisef
by the publisher.

But the public is currently saying "we'll take OS/2."  Take a look.
Sales are much higher than OS/2 1.x sales ever were, and they're
higher than Windows 1.x and 2.x were.

It is possible for Bill to be wrong again.  The important thing is
that he realizes this before the competition grabs up the market share
from him.  I'm looking out for my own interests here - I've lots of
Word documents that I'd hate to convert to Ami Pro.  But I will if I
must.

>     You can't seriously believe that Microsoft's success is due to
>luck.

Their early success was.  They got lucky with some good timing, else
DR would have been making DOS.  Recent success has been a combination
of good interfaces and good marketing and good pricing.  The public
was willing to put up with bugs because there were enough features in
the apps.  They put up with DOS because there were no viable
contenders (DR-DOS aside, they still don't threaten MS-DOS much).
They put up with Windows because there were no viable contenders
either. 

Now they have a choice, and it'll take more than features and
advertising.  It'll also take stability and compatibility.  NT's
stability will probably be just like OS/2's - buggy on initial release
and very good after that.  As for compatibility, let's hope they
realize that it's worth having.

The users won't care what's under the hood as long as they can use it
quickly and easilly, and it's compatible with existing installations. 

So what's my point?  So far, MS has won the apps wars (marginally)
from superior advertising and keeping one step ahead of competition in
features.  In the OS world, they've grown lazy in the absence of
competition, which will have to change.
-- 
David Charlap         |"there aren't 50,000 things for which it's worth writing
dic5340@hertz.njit.edu| software; and the computer industry doesn't have enough
----------------------+ programmers to create that much good software.
Therefore, most of it must be worthless" -- Boris Beizer "The Frozen Keyboard"
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32
From: kevin@edscom.demon.co.uk (Kevin Broadey)
Subject: Re: Multiuser (was Re: MS's misconduct!)
X-Disclaimer: These opinions are mine: others available on request.
Reply-To: Kevin Broadey <kbroadey@edscom.demon.co.uk>
Organization: EDS-Scicon, Milton Keynes, UK
	<1992Oct5.230835.22607@ms.uky.edu>
	<1992Oct5.215925.6501@hellgate.utah.edu>
	<1992Oct07.101657.16483@microsoft.com>
	<1992Oct8.022746.17575@solaris.rz.tu-clausthal.de>
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 14:50:43 GMT

>>>>> In article <1992Oct8.022746.17575@solaris.rz.tu-clausthal.de>,
>>>>> "Christoph" == hochstae@allfiwib1.wiwi.uni-marburg.de (Christoph
>>>>> H. Hochstaetter) writes:

Christoph> If I had to decide, between one machine with 5 processors, 5
Christoph> mice, 5 keyboard and 5 screens or 5 machines with one
Christoph> screen/mouse/KB/proc each, I probably would prefer the first
Christoph> solution. If there is only one user logged in a machine with
Christoph> 5 processors, he could have the full power of all five
Christoph> processors. Of course you are right, that it makes few sense
Christoph> to have a machine with 5 keyboard/mice and only one screen.

With NT's built-in networking and RPC capabilities you *have* got one
machine with 5 processors, 5 mice, 5 keyboards and 5 screens. Or 50, or
500.

As someone once said ... the computer *is* the network.

Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: amitp@ruf.rice.edu (Amit J Patel)
Subject: Re: Video games and NT
Reply-To: amitp@owlnet.rice.edu
Organization: Rice University
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 13:13:29 GMT

In article <1992Oct06.182007.28815@microsoft.com>, philipla@microsoft.com (Phil Lafornara) writes:
|> >I think thae main question here is speed. Most graphichs intensive DOS
|> >games directly access the hardware to get maximum speed. How fast will
|> >these programs run under NT?
|> 
|>      There are other factors to consider.  As hardware becomes faster,
|> directly accessing the hardware will not be necessary.  Wing Commander
|> II on a 486/33 is too fast to play, and that exists already.
|> 

As machines get faster, Origin will keep raising the requirements for
games.  Wing Commander II seems to be designed for a 386; the next
generation will probably demand a 486.  At any point in time, the DOS
version is going to be faster than the NT version, so the DOS version
can be run on more (slower) machines.

Your argument reminds me of some friends of mine who told me that as
machines get more powerful, there will be no need for hash tables or
binary trees --- we can just use linear searches then.

	:)


		Amit
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: eagle@garfield.catt.ncsu.edu (Daniel L'Hommedieu)
Subject: Re: Multiuser
Organization: North Carolina State University
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 12:13:16 GMT

brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
>You can do this under NT too.  NT's Windowing System, just as
>under X, causes the display hardware it attaches to, to belong
>to a single user during the duration of that login session.
>I.E. when user joe starts X, then joe owns that X session.
>NT is better than many X's in that when joe logs in, only joe
>and those users joe allows can write on joes screen, create
>windows, etc.

Possibly I'm missing your point, but your last statement is incorrect.
At least, it's incorrect in saying that "those users joe allows can
write on joes [sic] screen."

In our X labs out here, we like to play with the people we can convince
to type "xhost +" or "xhost +{computername}" because when someone types
that, anyone (or anyone on {computername}) can create a window on Joe's
screen.  People often wonder where those seventeen clocks came from. :)

Daniel
--
Daniel L'Hommedieu / Junior, CSC Depatment, NCSU / eagle@catt.ncsu.edu
From: Rec.humor.funny:				   "Ich bin ein Adler"
      My unique solution to two of the world's problems:
      "Feed the Homeless to the Hungry"
From: philipla@microsoft.com (Phil Lafornara)
Subject: Re: OS/2 2.01 Beta
Date: 13 Oct 92 18:38:21 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

In article <1992Oct13.013524.17621@muddcs.claremont.edu> tlilley@jarthur.claremont.edu (Thomas (Ted) Lilley) writes:
>In article <1992Oct12.211914.28594@microsoft.com> philipla@microsoft.com (Phil Lafornara) writes:
>>In article <1992Oct10.022802.14508@netcom.com> xtifr@netcom.com (Chris Waters) 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?
>>>
>>>>Well, I really can't imagine that
>>>
>>>Whether you can imagine it or not, that is exactly what MS has
>>>announced.  They have said that NT will "only support the top 100 DOS
>>>apps, and the top 100 Win apps" (does anyone still have a copy of this
>>>press release from MS they can post or forward to me?).  The trade-off
>>>is supposed to be:  you get better protection and process control from
>>>NT.  Seems reasonable enough to me; I might even be willing to make that
>>>trade-off when NT is released.
>>
>>     I don't believe that the quote you cite above is correct.
>>The key word in there is "only" - it implies that anything but
>>those top 100 apps will not run.  This is clearly not the case.
>
>Wrong.  You are the one inferring that support == run.  Support and 
>run mean two different things.  Only the top 100 dos and windows apps
>will be supported.  That means that many non-top 100 apps will have
>a good probability of running, BUT if they don't, you are SOL.  MS doesn't
>support your app.

     Your interpretation may be valid - the announcement could
certainly be read that way.  I'll check into it and see if I can
get a clarification on the DOS support policy for Windows NT.

				-Phil

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Lafornara         				1 Microsoft Way         
philipla@microsoft.com				Redmond, WA 98052-6399 
Note:  Microsoft doesn't even _know_ that these are my opinions. So there.
From: x90wardell@gw.wmich.edu
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Don't Compare with Amiga!
Date: 10 Oct 92 16:43:24 GMT
Organization: Western Michigan University


	Noticed a lot of talk about pre-emptive multitasking and
such .  A lot of the argument has to do with the Amiga being able
to do it with 512k.  

	OS's like OS/2 and NT require more memory than the Amiga becase
they simply do a lot more.  

	The Amiga, for example, does preemptive multitasking but does
not have any sort of protection.  It works on a similar basis as
Desqview (which to correct some people here, is NOT preemptive, you set
the "ticks" for foreground and background).  

	To use the Amiga accurately, one must use the Amiga 4000 and
Workbench 3.0 as its comparison.  From what I hear (and this is not
necesarily true since I have not personally READ it) it does offer
protection.  It is supposed tto also require over 2 megs of ram (I heard
3).  This is for an OS that only runs Amiga apps.

	The Intel platform has many OS's and environments and OS/2
and NT are expected to support them.  OS/2 2.0 could safely run
in 3 megs of ram if it did not have Windows or DOS support.  In fact,
I will go way out on a limb and say it could do it in about 2 megs
of ram (since the beta of OS/2 2.0 ran with 3 megs ram and it had
windows and dos support).  Now we are talking about a protected mode,
32 bit OS running on 2 megs if it didn't have DOS or windows support.

	So the comparision with the original Amiga 1000 with 512k
(which by the way realistically needed twice that memory to run well)
is comparing apples to oranges.  Application protection has a high
memory cost and the Amiga 1000,500 and 2000 all had unprotected
preemptive multitasking (which most apps for it bypassed anyway).

	The Amiga OS is about on par with Geoworks.  Geoworks preemptively
multitasks its own apps very well and offers no crash protection.  

	With that in mind, comparising something like OS/2 and NT
to Workbench and Amigados pre 3.0 is like comparing apples and oranges.

							-Brad

=================================
Brad Wardell  **Happy OS/2 2.0 User**
Project Director
Stardock Systems (SDS)
Western Michigan University
=================================
From: jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Tidbits about NT and OS/2 from the trade rags.
Date: 13 Oct 1992 13:31:32 GMT
Organization: UT Health Science Center Houston

In article <1992Oct12.212507.28868@microsoft.com> philipla@microsoft.com (Phil Lafornara) writes:
>     The "hidden reason" crowd are those who actually believe in
>some Microsoft/Ziff-Davis conspiracy to surpress Zachmann and his
>ideas.

Hardly. Microsoft and Ziff-Davis' reasons are transparent: MS wants to silence
a respected critic, and ZD wants to keep getting MS ad dollars.
-- 
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu      | adequately be explained by stupidity.
    Vote for a REAL change on 3 November: Throw out the check-bouncing,
  tax-and-spend Democrat Congress! (obviously, not an opinion of UTHSCH)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy