From: davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au (David Meiklejohn)
Subject: Re: OS/2 vs Win NT (was: 4 Colour Interfaces : -( )
Organization: Qld Dept Primary Industries
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 03:47:47 GMT

In article <Bz5vrq.AA0@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu> papresco@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu (Paul Prescod) writes:
>>I still can't see it.  I'm responible for supporting more than a hundred PCs.
>>Windows is all over the place, and growing.  People are buying ram, upgrading
>>motherboards, etc. just to run it.  Yet, in my region, we only have one PC
>>running OS/2, and that's so they can run some specialist software.  As far
>>as I can tell, we're typical of government departments, in this state, at
>>least.
>
>Yes, but at some point they are going to get REAL machines and need an
>OS for it, maybe by that time OS/2 will have gained some significant
>market share.

You know, I actually came in to work today (it's a sunday, but that's
dedication for you :-) to do some work, but I ended up reading News instead.
Oh well, it IS the weekend.  Anyway, I'm typing this on a Sun IPC.  Just
behind me is the 486DX/33 I normally use, complete with 8 megs RAM, 80MB HD,
and 1M Tseng HiColor SVGA.  Not a killer system, but it will run OS/2 (or,
at least it should, I haven't tried) and it's typical of what we're buying
now, as standard equipment.  You might think we should have more than 80 meg
hard drives these days, but we're networked, so all the big apps that take
all the space are on the servers.

So, we do have real machines, and the proportion capable of running OS/2 is
rising all the time.  I agree with you that, to make good use of this hardware,
we should use a real OS.  The problem is that there's no push among the
users for that, since the software the want to run is running well enough
for them in the Windows environment.  That's the hurdle OS/2 has - people have
to perceive a need for it before they'll give up what's familiar.

>>NT was written to be portable - OS/2 2.0 isn't.  That doesn't mean it can't
>>be ported, but it would be a huge effort.
>
>IBM is doing it.  Whether it will be successful or saleable is another
>question, but it's being done.  It will have a Mach microkernel.

Then it won't be OS/2 - it will be Yet Another OS (YAOS?).

>>Most users don't go to computerfests.  Of course the enthusiasts are
>>interested, but they do not the market make.
>
>And yet the Amiga hangs on without even the support of IBM... that has
>to count for SOMETHING.

Yeah.  I never said that OS/2 won't hang on.  The way I see it, we're
going to have a lot of OSs in the PC market, all surviving, for a long
time.  The PC market is big enough that that's not really a problem.
What I've been trying to say is that I don't think that OS/2 is going to
be THE big OS that everyone has on their desks.  Just like I've also argued
that the Amiga can continue to survive quite well without ever becoming
"mainstream".


-- 
David Meiklejohn (also known as davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au)
 - Regional support guy for PC's, Unix, and networks thereof.
 - But I'd rather be using an AMIGA!  Wouldn't you?
Find me in Mareeba, Australia (on the pointy bit in the northeast)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy