From: valley@gsbsun.uchicago.edu (Doug Dougherty)
Subject: Re: A personal perspective on choosing OS/2 2.0
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 15:45:53 GMT

linville@garfield.catt.ncsu.edu (John W. Linville) writes:

>technical and practical ways.  They just want to share their discoveries with
>those who rely on the highly-biased reports from the trade rags and have been
>mislead.

My position:
I would love to have a GUI that meets these criteria (presented
in no particular order)
	1) Fast (on reasonable hardware - i.e., my 386 SX/20)
	2) Doesn't crash (very often)
	3) Doesn't hang for long periods doing God knows what
	   (hourglass cursor or no)
	4) Compatible with all my old apps (and I do mean old - the
	   modem program that I use was assembled in 1985, and it is still the
	   best communications program I have ever seen anywhere,
	   for any platform)
	   I.e., when I want a good old DOS command line prompt to run
	   good old DOS programs, I don't have to fight through heavy
	   brush & shrubbery to get there.
	5) Will run all the latest stuff as well.
	6) Appeals to the technodweeb in me.
	7) Is not too highly touted in the, IMHO, "highly-biased trade rags".
	8) Multi-tasks w/o excessive overhead.  In particular (and this
	   is sort of a restatement of #1), switches between tasks
	   quickly.

You want to know what program meets these criteria?  DesqView!
(Actually, I had high hopes for DV/X, but now I'm not so sure...)

But, believe it or not, I'm not here to bang the drum for DV (stop by
comp.os.msdos.desqview if you want to join me and others in doing so)

What am I am here to ask is this: "Given the typical independent computer user
(I.e., not a Usenet reader, and not a corporate MIS person, but rather
someone who is a business user and is allowed, by his corporate culture,
to choose his tools), who is reasonably smart, and who makes up in low
cunning what he lacks in technodweeb knowledge, how is he to tell the
difference between Windows and OS/2?"  They sure look a lot alike!

They run pretty much the same programs.  And as one correspondent
pointed out, being able to format in the background is not of much
interest unless you understand the underlying concepts (DOS re-entrancy, etc)
and can thus see the significance of it.  Being able to format in the bg
is not exactly a selling point per se.

I'm really serious about this.  I understand the technical superiority
of OS/2.  I understand that, when it is really ready (which may be a few
more re-writes down the pike), it will run Windows better than Windows.
But what chance does any of this have, vis a vie the Joe Sixpacks of
the computer world, against the massive media blitz offered up by
MicroSoft?

My girlfriend says that OS/2 isn't sexy.  I think she's right.

Related to this is IBM's stock price.  IBM has always stood for
respectibility and stodginess.  I think looking at their stock price
over the years serves as a good barometer of the public's perception of
the importance and attractiveness of respectibility and stodginess.

	Lots of different ideas.  Hopefully some food for thought...
****************************************************************************
The Slug		valley@gsbsun.uchicago.edu

"He's trying to give up drinking, but his girlfriend hasn't left him yet."

(THis [sic] message should be assumed to have been smiley captioned for the
humor impaired)
From: craigg@hpwrce.HP.COM (Craig Gilmore)
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 18:49:11 GMT
Subject: Re: Address book software for Windows
Organization: MTView Escalation Central