From: jerry@cs.mcgill.ca (Gerald (Jerry) KUCH)
Subject: Re: 4000: Is it so great?
Organization: McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 15:28:48 GMT

In article <1992Sep26.061417.15240@utstat.uucp> philip@utstat.uucp (Philip McDunnough) writes:
>In article <1992Sep25.184419.12964@microsoft.com> iank@microsoft.com (Ian Kennedy) writes:
>
>I have no idea of the inside business dealings between IBM and Microsoft,
>and I find it incredible that a Micrososft employee would come out with 
>this kind of statement. OS/2 ver2.0 has received some very impressive
>evaluations where I work, which is a lot more than can be said for DOS (which
>Microsoft lucked out on) and Windows. I am no great lover of PC's, but it

Is NT being evaluated at your site yet?  It ought to get reasonably nice
reviews, from what I've seen of it.

>will be a blessed day when I haven't got anything from Microsoft left on
>my hard drive. It's only a matter of time before OS 2.1 will deliver me
>from a company that has yet to produce anything interesting and whose
>founder managed to mangle the main intent of Basic.

That fact that Windows 3.1 and OS/2 (any version) don't even seem to have the
same design goals in terms of features and comprehensiveness hasn't stopped
most people from making half-baked comparisons of them.  Justice aside, though,
OS/2's sales sound like they've been very lukewarm, and according to some of
the stats that I saw, a lot of sites are still running OS/2 1.2 in network
environments out of fear that too many things will break when they upgrade to
2.0.  I don't know how justified the fears are.

>The OS/2 version 2.0 beta testing was extremely open. IBM is changing rapidly,
>and at least it doesn't come out with "standards" such as MPC.

What's wrong with coming out with standards?  Do you have particular gripes
about the MPC standard, or is the very notion of MS participating in the
drafting of a standard offensive to you?

>Yes, NeXTSTep is indeed interesting and I love it on my NeXT. However, it's
>far too expensive for a personal computer. The next standard for PC's will
>be coming from IBM, with contributions from Apple. If there's any justice in
>the world Microsoft will simply fade away.

I agree... it probably will be too costly and out of the mainstream to catch
on with PCs in a very big way.  I wonder what will come of the rumors (or
have they been confirmed) that NeXT will ship NeXTStep 486 with their own
graphics card to avoid having to take the rap of being a "slow, bloated OS"
when the real blame would have been falling on shitty PC display cards.

>>P.S. It wasn't Microsoft that lost BILLIONS of dollars last fiscal year.
>>Now who's loosing money? It's not Microsoft that has to GIVE AWAY their
>>OS in order to get people to use it.
>
>What a joke. Windows comes bundled with every dog and cat in the world.
>I myself have 3 copies, which came free with the computer and various
>"multimedia" products.

So that's how they shipped 3 million copies in 6 weeks? :-)  Seriously 
though, all of the OEM and bundling agreements, jocularity aside, are making
Microsoft piles of money, whether those products get used or not.



-- 
 Jerry Kuch (jerry@cs.mcgill.ca) ---- PUT YOUR HAND INSIDE THE PUPPET HEAD.
 "I was wrong to play God.  Life is precious, not a thing to be toyed with.
  Now take out that brain and flush it down the toilet."
                  --- M. Burns  "Treehouse of Horror II"