From: brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill)
Subject: Summary of the COMDEX Big Event as seen from SLC, UT
Date: 8 Apr 92 00:34:28 MDT
Originator: brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept

Hi fellow OS/2'ers, I haven't had a chance to read news yet today, but
am betting that several people have already posted summaries of the
Comdex Big Event... but as I took notes... I hate to see them go to
waste, so here's my view:

I saw the COMDEX big event from the IBM OS/2 Bash in Salt Lake City
via satellite.  Anything in "" should not be taken as exact quotes
but close paraphrases; things happened too fast to get everything
correct.  Advance apologies for misspelled names, incorrect titles, etc.

First some news that might possibly have only been announced here in SLC.
A spokesman for Word Perfect (which is located in the Salt Lake area)
said that there would not be a release of 32-bit Word Perfect for 
OS/2 until the end of this year.  The good news is that not only
will there be one, but this version will skip 5.1 and be at the 6.0
level.  He also announced some changes in WP licensing, if I understood
him correctly, anyone that has license for say 5.0 on DOS, can at
will convert that to a 5.0 license on OS/2.  They also announced some
flexibility that allowed WP copies that are used by only by one person
to exist on more than one machine (similar to Borland licenses).

Now on to the Big Event.  If you missed this and care about OS/2, you'll
want to kick yourself... it was great!  I'm going to take
the approach of describing what happened from the SLC perspective as I'm sure
others will be covering the presentation too.

When I first got there I was a bit out of my usual element, I was
in my usual jeans, tee shirt and hiking boots and 98% of the people were
in suits... so I was somewhat apprehensive that this wouldn't be my kind
of place... but I knew a couple of people so it wasn't so bad.
My guess is there was around 250 people attending (including IBM employees).
They had us split into two rooms for the actual presentation.

The presentation started about 1/2 hour after I got there and was mainly
about WordPerfect, which didn't really interest me personally, then
finally the TV feed came in from COMDEX and I perked up a bit.
The first part was sort of an extended commercial.. it used the Charlie
Chaplin-like character that has been used by IBM in the past.
The focus of the commercial was the various phases of personal computing
in the last decade, and showed scenes showing the evolution... and
then went to the obvious .. i.e. OS/2 is the future... etc.
It was cute, but I was getting bored.

Then Michael Coleman VP of personal systems marketing, made the usual
style boring introductory remarks... sigh, this was beginning to
look like a real sleeper... others were seeming bored too.

Then another extended commercial... sigh Olympics... I HATE Olympics...
bunch of athletes shown interspersed with people typing on their
PS/2's furiously... dialog saying the usual about striving for excellence,
speed, power, I was about to be sick!  But SCREECH!! BANG!!! WHOA!!!
Suddenly on the screen in full downhill ski gear is Jim Cannavino
(and I missed part of this, not paying attention quite yet) and he's
skiing as OS/2 in the Olympics.  (Now I'm awake... you can see the
heads of the whole crowd lift at this point (I'm in the back)).
He ski's down the hill... and now there's a "play-by-play" description
of OS/2 (in the guise of JC) skiing down an Olympic course...
As he nears the bottom the play by play says:
	One last obsticale left... Windows...
	Can he break through????
	HE DOES!!!
	(The screen becomes a glass pane and breaks, JC goes through)
	A perfect score
	2.0
	2.0
	2.0!
Sometime around here, I decided this wasn't going to be the boring IBM
event I was afraid it would be.
The "commercial" then interviewed in rapid succession several customers
talking about how excited they were about 2.0... one said
"I hope it beats the pants off Windows".

Wow!

Then they cut back to the COMDEX stage... JC walks on wearing full ski
clothes... the crowd (there and locally) go wild.  He removes the jacket
and the proceeds to give his part of the presentation pacing back
in forth in ski boots... I could have lost money, if last week somebody
bet me that a high IBM muckety-muck like Cannavio would appear on
stage is ski boots (and I'm a conservative bettor).
The mike he was using did not work at first... (on purpose?)...
and he said "Do we have a Windows sound system in here?".
The crowd goes wild again.

He gave the overview of the presentation... then Fernand Serat gave
the details. Here's some misc notes:

	They had 30,000 beta sites (and remember MS is claiming they have
	the world's biggest beta test for 3.1 with 15,000 beta sites).

	They said about 250,000 people world-wide were seeing the COMDEX
	presentation.

	Sarat: "I happy to be sharing one of the most exciting moments
	in PC history with you."

	Interviews with people from Motorola, Micrographix,
	"The Corner Store"

	Main features of OS/2: Superior Crash Protection, Unmatched
	Network Capability, Integration of DOS, Windows and OS/2,
	Easy to use OO-shell.

	"NT promises, but OS/2 2.0 has it now"

	"Having a superior product is over half the battle; now the
	challenge is to communicate that fact... one way is pricing..."

	"We are darn serious about the end-user market."

	Support -- BBS, Hotline, even larger for large sites.

	"The advertising campaign started yesterday."

	120 meetings world-wide today.

	800 OS/2 to You demos will be done. (Where they set up
	a tent in a customers parking lot.)

	"PC industry is in the middle of a very significant transition."

	OS/2 Evolution (its future enhancements)
		Portable
		Multiprocessor
		POSIX
		DoD security
		Enhancing OO features
	(Hmmm... wonder where they got that list :-)).


The Lee Reiswig (chief of OS/2 development) was introduced as
"Mister OS/2 himself, The Blue Ninga" to do the actual demo.
He was demoing the GA release... had a ton of beta code from ISV's.
In general he showed scenes from a previous demo April a year ago,
and then showed how things were now.

Showed cut and paste between a DOS Lotus 1-2-3 window and a WP
window.

Showed 14 DOS programs running at once... tried to explain the importance
of background tasks in the future (to explain why multi-tasking is
important).

Showed DesqView and MS Flight Simulator... made the point that MS
Flight Simulator was the definitive test of Hardware compatibility
in the 80's.

"Windows is the most important DOS EXTENDER in the industry."

Showed Toolbook -- doing animations in a seemless windows window!!!
	When the "shark" animation (shark swimming menacingly) was shown
	he said
		"Probably looking for Billy there" (Bill Gates)
	the crowd loved it.

Showed OLE support using MS Word!

Showed Lotus 1-2-3 PM 32 bit beat doing DDE with a PM 16-bit program
called ChipChat.

Then in a change of pace in the demo he said
"This is just the beginning... what is needed to be competitive now."
He then proceed to show the WorkPlace Shell using files from
4 different networks.  The PS/2 driving one of the IBM huge monster
75 PPM laser printers.

Then had some announcements...

ES ships next week, 2 weeks early.

Yesterday LAN server shipped.

Demoed  a live query from a main-frame database using a 9600 baud connection.

THEN SAID....
"Steve Balmer is having sleepless nights cause he knows they have Windows
3.0 code... well he'll have a few more..."
Shows several maximized Win apps, dismissing them one at a time..
keeps saying sarcastically 'Big Deal' that they could bring that up
under windows... after doing this a few times... he reveals the Program
Manager... it was windows 3.1... he said that they had it working
24 hours after GA shipped (probably a slight stretch of the truth
but clearly they're close).

The presentation then ends... everybody is excited...
They bring out the copies of GA code they're drawing business cards
from a bowl to give away... they open one of boxes... get this... OS/2
comes with stickers just like the Mac OS'es used to...

Anyway, I won one of the copies of GA... so I've got it and you
probably don't!!! ... :-)  (Sorry -- had to gloat to someone).
(GA seems great as they said... still doesn't let Chuck Yeager
talk in Air Combat though... :-(, but otherwise I haven't found a
glitch... WorkPlace Shell is now fast enough that I'll sometimes use the disk
folders in preference to the command line, I'm happy as can be!!!).

Brian
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc