From: twong@civil.ubc.ca (Thomas Wong)
Subject: More Win3.1 vs OS/2? (Was: Windows 3.1 -- Confirm or deny?)
Organization: Dept. of Civil Engineering, U.B.C., Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 21:47:08 GMT

In article <1992Apr1.143428.1@qis.dofasco.ca> trembly_j@qis.dofasco.ca (John J. Trembly) writes:
>
>Hey !  If you don't really want to switch to a new environment you can buy OS2
>Version 2.0 for $79can if you own Windows 3.0, $99can if you own DOS, or
>$199can if you are a new user.  If you are a DOS or WINDOWS user, you send the
>title page from your manual. This will prove to IBM that you own a legitimate
>copy of the software.
>
>With OS2, you will be able to run any DOS, Windows, OS2-16 bit and OS2-32 bit
>applications without any problem. You will have to make sure you have a
>compatible BIOS ROM installed in your machine. 
>
I just had my first real good look at OS/2 yesterday. And I gotta say. I'm
impressed! Its object oriented format has finally made a PC windowing system
as useful as the Mac's envirnment, not like the very limited Windows. You
can finally do things that make sense like dragging a color into a window and
Pow! the window changes to that color. Or dragging a scheme to the window
and the window is now setted to that scheme. You can drag the most used
applications out into the desktop so that you don't have to go up and
down 2000 levels of windows to get to the next application that you want. 
And set it as shadow so that whatever you do to this copy, it also changes
the orginal. All these folders and applications are independent so that 
the subwindows are not restricted to the area within the upper window. 
eg. In Windows, everything is within the boundaries of the Program Manager 
and if you start moving lower windows (like Windows Appl...etc) around, 
they become hidden as they go past the edge of the boundary and so forth. 
Files are icons so that you can drag a file on top of the print manager 
and or a file onto an application and the files gets loaded and the 
application gets executed.  Or double click on a file and the application 
that's associated to it automatically gets executed and the file loaded. 
I can go on and on about how wonderful this object oriented scheme is where 
things are objects and you can do what seems natural like dragging an object 
onto another object and things gets done depending on what gets drag onto 
what. Put a drill on top of a piece of wood and you expect the drill to 
drill a hole in the piece of wood. But those of you who have used Macs 
and Unix windowing system already know how wonderful object oriented 
windowing systems are. I'm glad IBM is finally pulling away from 
Windows and catching up to the rest of the computing world.

And of course we all know that OS/2 is a completely new operation system
so things are done right from the ground up. Windows still runs under DOS
so.... it'll always run under DOS, until Windows NT, whenever that comes
out. So with OS/2, you can do true multitasking. I can format a disk
in one window, print a file in another window and be playing a game
while I'm waiting in the third. In Windows, when one window is executing,
all other windows stops. And if I am working on a portable, I can get
the OS2's print manager to spool all the print jobs and forget about it.
Then do my work and do all the printing I want and it'd all be spooled.
Then when I get back to the office, plug in the printer and everything
gets printed. And while the files are spooled, I can look at the files
or copy it onto another disk...etc. And since it is a completely new 
operating system (should you choose that mode, you can stay as DOS), 
you get more info with your file system like last modify time, creation 
time,...etc of each file. You can have long names with your file (no 
more 8 letters then 3 letter extension resitrictions with DOS). OS/2 
runs in 32 bit mode, the operating system itself, and talks in 386 code 
whereas DOS is still talking 8086 so that it's downward compatible. 
(Yes, you need at least a 386 to run OS/2. But 386s everyone I know 
has moved into the 386 level if not 486 level by now. Even those with 
only a 20 Mhx 386 only). So the high performance filesystems runs A 
LOT faster. 

And we all already know that OS/2 is DOS compatible and Windows 3.0 
compatible. When it gets WIn 3.1 compatible over the summer, OS/2 owners
can get a free upgrade to this newer version. And get this, you can boot 
a floopy in a window. In other words, I can be running OS/2, then put
a DOS 2.1 boot disk in my drive and boot a window from floppy as DOS 2.1,
or even better yet, boot a game disk (some games expect you to boot from
the floppy to run) in a window and have it run separately. And OS/2
comes with a command line window so that you can make use of the OS/2
features for those who likes to type and use command line. All Windows
can do is open up a DOS window, but we don't get to use Window's
features within since it's only a DOS window.

Does it run Windows faster than Windows? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
The first Windows application is slow but once it loads the first
Windows application and have Windows system loaded, the rest of the
Windows applications comes up fast.

All the documentations are online with OS/2. It also comes with a 
tutorial online as well. Comes with goodies like you see in Unix
windows like Pulse (shows a graph of CPU usage), basic spreadsheet,
planner, calendar, clock....etc.

I can go on and on but I won't. :) But since the OS/2 upgrade price
and the Win3.1 upgrade price are about the same (IBM did it right
this time by making OS/2 cheap), a lot of others might migrate over
to OS/2 since it can run all 3 types of environments. But I'll probably 
get both OS/2 and Win 3.1 just for the heck of it. :)

Thomas.