From: brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill)
Subject: Re: superVGA (and misc top-blowing) 
Date: 13 Aug 92 19:08:51 MDT
Originator: brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept


  > From:  dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap)
  > In-reply-to: Your message of "13 Aug 92 19:44:41 MST."
  >              <1992Aug13.194441.3260@njitgw.njit.edu> 
  > In article <1992Aug12.125401.18428@hellgate.utah.edu> brian%jensen.cs.utah.
    >>> edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
  > >Why then, does IBM not provide seemless windows support for 8514... is
  > >it not a standard?  Perhaps I should contact the manufacturer? :-))
  > 
  > Seamless Windows was gotten working almost at the last minute.  They
  > only had one driver for it availabe at GA.  The other resolution
  > seamless drivers will be out with the corrective service pack.
Why does everyone seem to think that it's ok that IBM put out a sloppy product
and then 4 months later still hasn't fixed it?

  > 
  > >Why does the ATI Ultra (which can do 1280x1024) driver stop
  > >at 800x600?
  > 
  > Ask ATI, it's their driver.  If you want 1024x768, use IBM's 8514/a
  > driver. 
  > 
  > >It's a sad day when you have to consider buying new hardware to match
  > >your operating system, when the hardware you have is already reasonably
  > >modern (< 2 years old).
  > 
  > I haven't had to buy any hardware.  My generic 386/25 with an ATI VGA
  > Wonder and a 210MB IDE hard drive have worked just fine.  Maybe you
  > just got unlucky and bought hardware from companies that don't care
  > about what you're running on it.
  >
I imagine if IBM actually had bothered to create a device driver kit for
OS/2, then there WOULD BE an ATI driver already.
I personally know of three different developers trying to write device/printer
drivers.  IBM simply does not have sample code available and the documentation
they do provide is very poor.  I don't see why you're blaming the video
card vendors, when IBM hasn't even provided a rudimentary DDK.
Besides, there are probably less than 500,000 people using OS/2... why
(especially in light of IBM's attitude) should a video card vendor care?

  > It'll come when the board manufacturers get on the ball.  The fast
  > ones (like Trident) are going to clean up in this respect.
No, people like my will simply switch to Windows 3.X or Windows NT as
fits their needs.  I am not going to replace a perfectly good, modern
video card just because the operating system I run is made by a company
that is too disorganized to acquire/encourage proper drivers.

  > 
  > >Oh, another thing that kills me is people knocking Windows 3.X
  > >for "shipping" 12-17 million, with only maybe 4-8 million in actual
  > >use.  How many of the (finally confirmed numbers from IBM!) 1,000,000
  > >that's been shipped of OS/2 2.0, are actually in use?
  > 
  > Well, considering that all 1,000,000 of the OS/2 shipments were either
  > requested or paid for, I'd say it'll be a lot larger that the
  > percentage of Windows installations in use.  Most Windows 3.x
  > installations are given away free with hardware purchases by vendors.
  > I know of only one vendor (IBM) which is pre-installing OS/2 on
  > systems.
  > 
  > >At home and at work I have a total of 4 copies of OS/2 2.0.
  > >Only 2 of these copies are in use.  My guess is that this is far from
  > >untypical.
  > 
  > Why did you buy two more copies than you're using?  You couldn't have
  > gotten them for free unless you have OS/2 1.x installations to
  > upgrade. 
To non-students especially, 50 bucks is not a big deal.  To people
that already had OS/2 1.X, you'd be stupid not to upgrade for free
wouldn't you?  While I agree that probably a higher percentage of OS/2 copies
are in use, I suspect that number is about 50% (as opposed to 30% for Windows).

As to why 2 of my 4 copies are not used... 
At work I have 2 copies because unexpectedly they sent me a free upgrade
to the EEP beta copy.  I lied a little bit about having 2 copies at work...
in truth until a few hours ago I only had one.  Back in February IBM
told me that the fastest, best way to get a copy of OS/2 2.0 GA was to
buy a copy of OS/2 1.3 and a free upgrade would be provided.  I dutifully
sent in my upgrade form with proof of license on April 6th.  While
I was at the OS/2 Developers conference (July 8th), I got my proof of license
back from IBM.  It seems I failed to check my preference in diskette sizes.
On June 12th I sent the revised form back.  I finally received my upgrade copy
of OS/2 2.0 GA today -- of course in order to install it, I would have
to first install OS/2 1.3 -- but then what's a little inconvenience to the
customer?

I also have 2 copies of OS/2 at home... one for me, and one for my wife.
My wife's copy of OS/2 is no longer being used because she grew tired
of waiting for the June CSD to speed things up, she uses mostly windows
programs and OS/2 does a poor job with them... especially in the area of
OLE, which is quite important to her.  Also the 8514 support works poorly
with the ATI Ultra card, and does not support seemless windows... in the
end she decided that the benefits of OS/2 were not worth the trouble.
Before you think that she's some unsophisticated user... she's currently
getting her PhD in Computer Science, her area of specialty is user interfaces,
and she has about 4-5 years experience as a Unix system administrator.
(I have about 10 years experience as a Unix sys admin, and about
2-3 years experience doing PC/Mac software development.)
Though it made her sad to do so, she switch to Windows 3.1 (and I can confirm
it is much faster than OS/2).  Yes she lost some multitasking ability, but
her apps now work great, and we know that NT's around the corner (we
have two copies of the pre-release at home, as we both intend to do
development for NT in the near future.)  Note we did this at the expense
of the TCP/IP network we had at home, OS/2's drag on her productivity made
the network less important.

We would like to have been able to help OS/2 succeed, I was all geared up
to get into PM programming, but due to the lack of books on the subject
I never could quite get started.  At work I do indeed do development for
OS/2 (a commerical product that will be spun off from our research group
to a company).  The development tools suck, EVERY time I've dealt with
IBM I end up with a bad taste in my mouth.  I just don't see how
they'll keep customers once NT comes out.  Microsoft on the other hand
seems to be doing everything right to attract developers, and I don't see
why I should miss the bandwagon.  A couple of weeks ago, I decided I'd
had enough and made a long posting to comp.os.os2.programmer outlining
the problems I had as a developer.  While things were taken care of w.r.t
my confusion over the Developer Assistance Program.  The compiler group
has still not gotten back about my optimizer bug... it's a typical
story with IBM.  You report you're problem... you get a sympathetic ear...
they pass the problem through the channels... it gets dropped.  This is
at least the fifth time I've had this happen.
Everybody I'v talked to at IBM (with the possible exception of IBM's OS/2
Evangelist, Dave Whittle) agrees that the bureaucracy is a real problem, but
nobody seems to have a clue of how to do more than get around it to fix my
current specific problem. Is this a way to run a successful business?

In response to my posting I was deluged with mail from other developers
saying similar things... many have given up doing OS/2 development.
You can dream about the great apps that will be available under OS/2
all you want, but if IBM doesn't start doing things right and soon, it isn't
going to happen.

From my personal standpoint, I'm developing for Windows from now on.
From my job standpoint, we'll put out our current product, but without
major change on IBM's part, that may be the only one to be on OS/2 from us.
Our product will be available under NT also, and maybe plain windows, if
Win32s is sufficiently rich.

  > 
  > >Further as things stand... if NT is half as good as promised
  > >NONE of these may be in use when NT's first beta ships.
  > 
  > You'll trash a working system (which will have its bugs fixed by then) > for the first beta of a completely new system?  I fail to see the > logic, but that's your problem.
  > 
In my opinion, OS/2 is not yet a working system.  As to "will have its bugs
fixed by then", you should talk to the guy inside IBM I talked to that said
they were internally refusing to install the 32-bit GDI release as it was
still too buggy.  I certainly would not look for the "June CSD" in early
September.  October if you're lucky.  And as the DDK is still not ready, don't
hold your breath about having lots of super VGA drivers then either.
Also the CSD will not be a CSD, but it is quite likely one will have to
pay for parts of it, especially the Windows 3.1 part.

Don't get wrong... I want very much that OS/2 would have succeeded, but IBM
seems to be dedicated to making that not happen.
Things really only have about 6-8 months to turn around... I hope it happens
as I believe it healthy for Microsoft to have some competition.
As things stand at the moment, Microsoft would have to screw up VERY badly
for either OS/2 or some version of Unix to really have a chance against it.
You are quite mistaken if you believe that NT is not real, or not yet good.
It's very rough at the moment, but clearly there's a gem underneath.

OS/2 has only two strength's over NT, the WPS and better DOS support.
NT has dozens of things OS/2 doesn't.
Even when OS/2 has a competing feature, NT wins, as it's in NT's base package
-- IBM charges some attrocious price.

Consider what I would like to have at home:
	Base OS + printer and file sharing + Multimedia support.
The cheapest I can do this with OS/2 is to buy TCP/IP base kit + NFS, and
it doesn't work as invisibly as it should. Cost: $159.95 + ~200 + 149 = ~550.
Microsoft has said definitely that NT will be below $500, and
before you say, but I can get OS/2 for less that 159.95, remember that
I'm just comparing list price with list price.  Microsoft has also
made it quite clear that upgrade offers will exist and that especially
for OS/2 2.0 users, they will be "quite competitive".
I of course will get a copy of NT from the purchase of the SDK for $69.
Microsoft also intends to arrange good deal so that higher-end systems
can come bundled with NT... my guess is that NT will have a street price
in the $150-$250 range, well worth it considering what you get.
And no, it's not for everybody... just people that spend $2,000 on a system.
(In February, given current trends, I would expect a 486SX 25 with 200Mb hard
disk and 16 megs memory to sell for around $2,000.  This would clearly
make a great NT system).

One last thing... people say that they don't need C2 security at home... true
sort of... what they fail to release is that C2 means logons, and logons
mean per user profiles (screen colors, work groups, etc), and that means
it makes sharing a single computer much easier.  The admin tools that
setup users are a breeze to use, so I suspect that won't be a problem like
it is with Unix.


  > >Oh... one other thing... Borland has now said that the compiler for
  > >OS/2 will not be available till year's end.  It's about to enter
  > >beta.  Borland said at the NT developers conference that they will
  > >have the NT version out within 2 months of NT's release.
  > 
  > Which compiler?  Borland C++ for OS/2 has been in beta for a while
  > now.  They make a large number of compilers, including C++, Turbo C,
  > Turbo C++, Turbo Pascal, ObjectVision, Turbo Assembler, etc.  I think
  > you are thinking of one of the Turbo lanuguages.
Borland C++ is what I meant of course... I'm going to be in the EEP for
Borland C++, and I just got the letter last week.  Maybe the beta has started,
but if so, it only just started, and the letter states explicitly
that the product is scheduled to ship by year end.  I guess it could go out
early, but that is not the norm for anyone's software product.

Brian
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy