From: rlosee@unlinfo.unl.edu (Robert Losee)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: OS/2 and NT at Comdex
Date: 11 Dec 1992 20:47:20 GMT
Organization: University of Nebraska--Lincoln	
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: unlinfo.unl.edu

brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:

>In article <1992Dec10.025505.5900@muddcs.claremont.edu> tlilley@jarthur.claremont.edu (Thomas (Ted) Lilley) writes:
>>In article <1992Dec9.211907.19367@fcom.cc.utah.edu> brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
>>
>>>
>>>The question that remains is why?  I mean if OS/2 has shipped 1 million
>>>or 2 million or whatever numbers of copies, why haven't ISVs came around?
>>>My only guess is that OS/2 doesn't really have many desktop users, otherwise
>>>I cannot believe the market would be ignored.
[...]
>As at the developers conference in October, OS/2 had not yet reached 1.5
>million, I would estimate there are around 1.6 million copies shipped.

If they sole 1.5M by October, a linear increase in sales put it at 
about 2M now.  I believe this is reasonable (see below).

>Corporate sites would have sent in upgrade requests by now, and there
>were nearly 1,000,000 sites with OS/2 before, very little of which
>was used for the non-developers desktop.  So let's assume that of
>that 1.6 million, only 1 million have the potential of being used for
>the desktop.  Well I think clearly the bulk of these sales will have

I don't know what you mean here.  Where else would they go?  Are you 
refering to servers?  Out of the 40-50 OS/2's I know of that are 
running about 5 are servers.

>been from Windows upgrades.  The problem here is that a significant number
>of Windows users were turned off by the poor performance of their Windows
>apps under OS/2.  Thus I think it a fair bet that perhaps half
>the Windows users trying it, abandoned it.  There are also a fair
>number that found out the hard way about what an IBM 4 megs minimum means,
>and a fair number of copies that IBM gave away for free. For example every
>Early Experience site got a free copy, that's 30,000 free copies just there.

>All things considered it is not unreasonable to believe that there are
>only 300,000 _desktop_ users of OS/2, though perhaps it might be as high
>as 600,000.  This is not that big of a market, unless you have a
>developer tool or a data management tool where the numbers go up, and OS/2 
>as lots of these.

>One also has to take into account the number that will leave OS/2 for
>NT when it comes out.  NT _will_ have apps when it comes out, and this
>is a tremendous draw for desktop users.

My experience is that users feel they already have apps (DOS and 
Windows) plus being able to switch in protected memory spaces between 
applications.  OS/2 specific applications will be nice when they 
arrive and should further increase sales, but the current interest is 
based mostly on current productivity enhancements.

[...]

We all evaluate this elephant from our own perspectives.  Mine are 
quite different than your estimates.  In the computer group I'm in 
there are 7 copies of Windows 3.0 but I'm the only one who regularly 
uses it.  And I complain about it all the time.  At home I have 
installed OS/2 on my Gateway 486/33 (of course dropping W3.0) and
love it (even without the CSD).  If I'm primarily doing PC stuff I
sometimes stay at home to get my productivity up.  Now one person
here has the same machine I've got at his home, but to the best of my
knowledge has never used Windows on it (although it came with it). 
He tried OS/2 and will probably return to it after he has a 32-bit
OS/2 compiler of some sort so he can let it do puzzels and large
combinitorical problems in the background. So there you have 9 copies
of W3.0 and only one being used by a person (me) who'd rather be on
OS/2.

I've also seen a number of users here who have upgraded from DOS 
applications who seem to really enjoy OS/2's capabilities and 
connectivity.

Finally my wife supports OS/2 for the State of Nebraska.  She finds 
herself more and more spread out by increasing usuage of the product. 
And she's frequently bringing home stories about people saying "OS/2, 
you've got to be kidding who'd use that stuff" who after they try it 
start to really like it.

What is most interesting to me is that despite what I consider clearly
biased press against OS/2 (and a love affair with a product that isn't
out yet) the use of OS/2 in my environment continues to dramatically 
increase.  Now that the press is turning much more favorable (three 
excellence awards this year, and improving reviews) I'd expect sales 
to be further enhanced.

From the above my interpretation of the ship figures are that most OS/2's
are well used, where as Windows is not (the one person I mentioned
who tried OS/2 and dropped it had a borrowed copy just to see if it'd
help him so he doesn't even count in the OS/2 not used catagory).

As for my personal history on all this; I was a strong supporter of
W3.0 (which is why we got 7 copies here at work). Gradually I wanted
more (especially to not have to wait while W3.0 did its work) so
after a few weeks of reports about OS/2 GA I tried it as a cost
savings.  Yup, cost savings.  I had DOS 5.0, and W3.0, and New Wave,
and PC/REXX to all upgrade somewhere down the line.  I figured I
could buy the additional 4M and OS/2 for about my estimated price of
all the upgrade fees (just the first set of upgrade fees).  As you 
might deduce, I'm willing to change if value (performance/cost) is 
worth it.  OS/2 has been.  Marginal improvements from NT seem unlikely
to me at this time to warrant the wait or cost of NT.

Sales of ISV's products to me will be the biggest indicator or where 
this market is going, so I'm anxiously waiting for their results.
>Brian
--
*-------------------------------------------------------------------------*
Robert D. Losee                 BITNET: ucas402@unlvm
University of Nebraska          Internet: rlosee@unlinfo.unl.edu
Lincoln NE  68588-0496          Phone: (402) 472-7663
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy