Organization: Wirtschaftsuniversitaet Wien, Vienna, Austria
Date: Tuesday, 8 Sep 1992 12:09:49 CET
From: FLATSCHER Rony <RONY@awiwuw11.wu-wien.ac.at>
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: OS/2 vs NT features list, Revision 1.5

Brian:

How come you tout OS/2's Windows 3.0 support being "mediocre" ???

Coming from 16bit Windows 3.0 to 32bit OS/2 I have tons of Windows-
apps which run extremely well, some of them even better than under
DOS/Windows 3.0. Because of that I conclude unbiasedly that the
Windows 3.0 - support in 32bit OS/2 is excellent (e.g. running Excel,
Word4Wind, Lotus 1-2-3, AmiPro, CorelDraw, Ventura 4, Norton Desktop
for Windows, ATM, WordPerfect4Windows ....) including OLE.

Even better, if I need more memory than physically available for
Windows session, I just turn up DPMI-memory with the mouse, e.g. to
16 MB. I do that on occassion for two separate full-screen-Windows-
sessions, each running multiple Window-applications.

For testing OS/2-Window-implementation I even tried the old Excel 2.1
which did not run on Windows 3.0 - and it worked flawlessly under
32bit OS/2 !

Because of these reasons I truly think that 32bit OS/2 support for
Windows 3.0 is excellent and even better than it is possible under
the DOS/Windows tandem !

Touting it "mediocre" looks to me like you are bashing OS/2 by
projecting feelings which do not stand up to a closer look but
camouflaging it by telling the readers that you are "trying" to
compare a non-released product to a released one as objectively as
possible.

Another example. You tout that NT has the extremely important feature
of asynchroneous read/writes, which are missing in 32bit OS/2. You miss
to tell us that still these important functionalities are available
under OS/2, and that OS/2 allows you much finer control. Why do you think
the 16-bit-asynchroneous read/writes were dropped for the 32bit version ?
It looks to me like the designers of NT sticked too close to the old
16-bit OS/2-layout.

A last example. It seems that you are very familiar with NT-features, then
you turn around at 32bit OS/2 and complain, if they are not implemented
there as they are in NT. On the other hand you seem not be to intimated
with the concepts of 32bit OS/2. As others pointed out e.g REXX is an extremely
important concept for both, developpers and users. It is an easy to use, yet
very powerful batch-language which optionally replaces the old DOS-style
batch-language. Contrary to present incarnations of Basic it is not over-
loaded with tons of functions, hence it is still easy to learn. If we
take a look not at IBM-mainframes (where REXX is available for years) but
to the Amiga-world, you'll notice REXX being a part of the operating system
since 1989. The point here is, that Amiga-apps since written allow interaction
with and from REXX. Thereby the end-user can start to replace the many
different macro-languages (think of Excel, Lotus, Word4Windows, AmiPro,
WordPerfect) by the simple REXX. No need to learn new complicated and
many times unintuitive macro languages. For 32bit OS/2 there are some new
applications which allow for this already (e.g. Borland's ObjectVision,
Lotus 1-2-3 2.0 for PM, many new 32bit OS/2-tools, notably comm-packages).

Sorry, a very last example. You praise the new specs of OLE coming up in
NT. You miss to discuss totally SOM of 32bit OS/2. How come ? To me SOM has
much more potential over OLE, even in its enhanced form. Did you look at the
Workplace Shell of 32bit OS/2, which is OLE at its best, but implemented
with the much more powerful SOM ? What about the organic extensions being
in the next version of 32bit OS/2 ? (Did you try to drag text in EPM to another
instance of EPM or SOM-aware application and see what happens?)

So, I think your comparisons are very biased in favor of NT, a product which
is not there yet (but will be, I agree) and which was promised by MS to be
there at the end of the year (last year they said 1Q92, 2Q92 the latest !).
The good thing though is, that both IBM and MS may be exposed to more
technical questions and concepts and this may spur the innovation of both.

---rony