From: ghenniga@NMSU.Edu
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: os2 what good is it?
Date: 27 Jan 93 18:32:41 GMT
Article-I.D.: ampere.GHENNIGA.93Jan27113241
	<1993Jan25.171630.29447@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca>
	<1993Jan25.235851.1366@itsmail1.hamilton.edu>
Reply-To: ghenniga@NMSU.Edu
Organization: New Mexico State University - Electromagnetics Group


In an article jmalloy@itsmail1.hamiliton.edu (Joseph T. Malloy) writes:
>In article <1993Jan25.171630.29447@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca> hwhalen@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca (Hugh Whalen) writes:
>>>>What the HELL is os2 good for?  I heard it was gonna be 50 meg at 
>>>>LEAST!
>>>
>>>You heard wrong. It'll do just fine in 20-25 meg.
>>>
>>>>I can do anything os2 can do with my windows!
>>>
>>>....except run reliably.
>>
>>I run Windows and lots of different software - Wordperect, Word for 
>>Windows, Excel, PowerPoint, WinQVTnet, Paradox, dBase :-(, Access, 
>>AfterDark, Norton Desktop, Printcache, Crosstalk for Windows, Packrat 
>>etc. I have also run Turbo C++ for Windows, I spend an average of six 
>>hours a day on my machine. It has been over a month since I had a 
>>crash or a GPF. I run less on my home machine but I haven't had a 
>>crash (that I can recall) on that machine since I loaded Windows 3.1 
>>(about a week after it's release date). While your milage may vary it 
>>seems pretty reliable to me.
>>
>>My $.02 worth.
>>
>>Hugh Whalen                     | Where all men think alike, no one
>>Faculty of Administration       | thinks very much.
>>University of New Brunswick     |               - Walter Lippmann
>>
>Ditto here.  The odd app that does crash (usually a truly odd app!) is
>easily shut down by local reboot in my experience.  I reboot my machine
>only when I make changes to startup files or, if that doesn't occur
>often enough, once a week, whether it needs it or not.  For many people,
>Windows 3.1 is utterly stable.  In my case, even Windows 3.0 was stable,
>and I've been using 3.1 for well over a year now (I beta'd) was utter
>stability.

I agree, I don't think stability is a good issue anymore. Now if you're
running Windows 3.0 then it's a different story! Anyway, reliability
usually has little to do with the OS and more to do with the applications
(at least after the second release or so of the OS). Where OS/2 2.0 really
shines is in it's crash protection! IF you do have a program that
consistently crashes Windows what do you do? I used to reboot, reboot,
reboot! That no longer occurs under OS/2 it just tells me there's a problem
and pops me back to the WPS.
	Even if crashes are not an issue with you, have you ever printed a
30 page or so document (including heavy graphics) from Windows? This is
REALLY what converted me! I just can't understand why my 486/33 HAS to be
completely useless while it does something like print? Don't know about
anyone else but watching a dialog box spit out page numbers for 10-15
minutes isn't my idea of an advanced OS. Of course there's the good old
floppy issue also...Why must something with a 486 processor be a huge paper
weight for the 5 minutes or so it takes to format a floppy. Unless the
manufacturer of the floppy drive is doing some fantastic stuff I haven't
met a floppy drive yet that needs 100% of the CPU to format it's media!
	And finally the last reason I switched was I was tired of trying to
use my PC to debug FORTRAN and C codes that used large data sets. I usually
use my PC to debug such codes then port them to a workstation with a lot of
horsepower. Under DOS (even with Windows) I'd have to completely rewrite
portions of the code which allocated large chunks of memory simply because
under that pair I was stuck with these 15,000 line codes that had to fit
in 640KB, or at best 1MB, of RAM. Again, something else that was
inconceivable to me when I had 16MB of RAM in my PC!
	Anyway, there are reasons for sticking with DOS+Windows, in
particular insufficient hardware. Other than that I just can't see why
anyone would CHOOSE to stay with the pair of kludges which are DOS+Win when
they have the hardware requirements and OS/2 is so cheap?

Gary Hennigan
---------
PhD Student, Computational Electromagnetics
New Mexico State University
email: ghenniga@NMSU.Edu
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy