From: sillett@edc3jr.gsph.pitt.edu (Robert L. Sillett)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: NT Beta (was Re: Zachaman and NT and OS/2)
Date: 12 Sep 92 05:00:10 GMT
Organization: Epidemiology Data Center, University of Pittsburgh

In article <1992Sep12.032927.6014@fcom.cc.utah.edu> brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
%
%What basis do you have for the statement "NT is not looking good right
%now?".


Well I wasn't the original poster, but I have used NT since I attended
the Win32 PDC earlier this summer.  So....

Microsoft must be either exceedingly stupid or scared to have released
such a brain-dead version of Windows NT.  It is laughable that
Microsoft couldn't get the DOS and Win16 subsystems to work.  Come on!
These are the people who __WROTE__ DOS and Windows!  When I got back
to the office, I installed NT and, of course, started to play with it.
Microsoft told me that the DOS and Win16 systems weren't complete.
OK.  I'll accept some problems, but when Windows 3.1 Write crashed NT
-- well, I knew Microsoft had fed me a lot of hype.


%
%Ports from Windows 3.X to NT are trivial... I suggest you talk to
%a few more developers.
%

Ahem.  If you port your application correctly to Win32, that is if you
take advantage of threads, beziers, etc., then you have a lot of work
to do.  A straight port from Win16 -> Win32 can cause problems if you
don't check the results from all the new 32-bit calls.  I talked to a
developer for Corel Draw at the PDC.  It took Corel a month to port
from Win16 to Win32.  That's great!  But the new Win32 Corel is not
multi-threaded, so the "trivial" port (a.k.a. the simply recompile
story) is simply not true.


%
%This is blatantly false. How can it as hard to port to an API that
%is mostly a superset?
%

The new Win32 API, while being a superset of Win16, includes new
parameters and new return values.  If you're not careful, your code
can do new, strange, and not-so-wonderful things.


%
%NT ideally wants its apps running in its native environment.
%


*** BANG !!! ***

You've hit the nail right on the head!  Microsoft is using the same
line for Windows NT as it did for OS/2 1.x: forget your old DOS-based
apps, move to [OS/2 1.x/Windows NT].  I'm sorry, but DOS has served
the Intel 8086/8088 for ten years now and there are tons of DOS
applications out there.  And Microsoft will only let the "top 100" or
so DOS/Win16 applications run under Windows NT?  As a user, I don't
care how great Win32 and it's flat model are.  I may have my phone
list or appliance serial numbers stored in a freeware ASCII flat-file
database that I downloaded from a BBS years ago.  Why should I have to
purchase FoxPro/NT simply because Microsoft doesn't believe in public
domain/shareware programs?  I should be able to move to NT to take
advantage of pre-emptive multitasking and crash-protection: two "new"
features that end users can see right away (especially with multimedia
becoming so cheap).



%>on Dec Alpha based systems, Sparc Stations, etc, will be able to plop
%>in a Windows program and run it.  The NT beta is not good.  It has
%>more serious flaws than just not running 16 bit windows stuff.  It
%>does not run DOS acceptibly.  
%
%Why is this a serious flaw in a developers release?
%

What good is NT if it doesn't run my favorite editor, which happens to
be a DOS application?  After all, I've used it to develop applications
for Windos 3.1.  Since Windows NT has it's all-in-one command line,
why should it care if I use a DOS or NT editor?  The sad part is that
it does -- from the company that wrote DOS and Windows.  Many
companies have DOS and Windows running under Unix, yet Microsoft can't
get them to work under NT?


%>	Developers have to ask themselves, what is the compelling
%>reason to write for NT?  It doesn't run Windows they way they thought
%
%Because they can write one set of source code that will run on
%all machines from the small-end desktop up through mid-range multiprocessors.
%

Ummmmm....  Don't I already have this with DOS 5.0?  I can run edlin
on an 8088 or a 486/50.  I assume that DOS will work on the P5, too,
which is faster than many RISCs (so I have read).


%
%Now let me see if I understand your argument properly.
%Windows NT does not yet have good 16-bit Windows support or DOS support
%so developers should develop for OS/2?
%
%

No.  At least for me, Windows NT does not have usable support for DOS,
Win16, or NetWare (ah, yet another story from the PDC) for me to even
think of developing for Windows NT.  I can't even use Windows 3.1
Write.  I even have to dual-boot to even look at my Win16 application.

While Windows NT could be the greatest thing since Altair BASIC, it
looks more and more like OS/2 1.21 to me....

Speaking of OS/2, please note that not once did I compare Windows NT
to OS/2 2.0 (or even mention OS/2 2.0).  

--- Bob

-- 
| Robert Sillett                  Internet:    sillett@edc3jr.gsph.pitt.edu  |
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Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy