From: philipla@microsoft.com (Phil Lafornara)
Subject: Re: NT vs OS/2 features (was Re: Misinformation about os2-dos HW access)
Date: 01 Sep 92 01:05:48 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

In article <1992Aug31.071152.10931@nuscc.nus.sg> eletanjm@nuscc.nus.sg (TAN JIN MENG) writes:
>brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
>
>: 	Full symmetric multiprocessing support.
>I believe IBM has a Parallan server (multiprocessor) which runs OS/2. I
>don't know any other details though.

     Multiprocessing != Symmetric multiprocessing.  Last I heard, IBM
had a version of OS/2 that would run network stuff on one processor,
and everything else on another.  That's not symmetric.
     If there has been an advance that I haven't heard about, I'm sure
someone will correct me.  :-)


>: 	Platform independent device driver support.
>Is there really such a beast ;-).

     Windows NT has this "Hardware Abstraction Layer" that is supposed
to make driver-writing easy.  I haven't tried it, haven't really
looked at, so can't comment on how useful it really is.


>: 	Generalized Registry. (database as replacement for '.ini' files)
>???

      Well, it's essentially just what Brian said - a big database
that replaces all those .ini files.  It's kind of neat, but it's often
hard to remember what's in there.


>: 	Pen Support.
>Well seeing that I still am not convinced pen computing is such a big
>thing, I'll reserve comment.

     Pens are neat.  They seem to be a niche market for the moment,
although that may change in the future.  I can't imaging anyone
who can write faster than they can type, though...


>: 	Fully 32-bit drivers.
>NT can never be fully 32bit because it wants to support Windows, DOS
>etc.

      This is not strictly true.  Windows NT runs 16-bit Windows
and DOS apps in subsystems - when running a 16-bit Windows apps,
any time spent in API calls will be mapped to the appropriate
Win32 calls.  All the drivers can be fully 32 bit.


>: 	SDK has C++
>Borland's C/C++ is in beta now. I believe C++ is next on IBM's compiler
>development list. Zortech has some (I belive) primitive OS/2 support
>already. Don't forget GCC of course which (apparently - since I don't
>have the toolkit |-(.) works with the IBM supplied toolkit.

     C++ is a non-trivial language to support - if IBM is just
starting now, don't expect to see anything from them for a while.
GCC does do C++, however.  Probably doesn't optimize, though.


>: 		High Reliability
>I'll believe it when I see it. otherwiseI'll take it with a grain of
>salt.

     It's been pretty reliable for me so far.  As you say, though,
believe it when you see it.  Always good advice.


>Comment on FS support. In both OS/2 and NT it will probably be the case
>that FAT file systems will be retained in some volume of other. I think
>I can garauntee that heterogenous file systems will result in problems
>whether it is NTFS or HPFS. For instance, so what if NTFS supports
>journaling if there is a crash in FAT partition. 

     If you're running FAT, then you don't get the benefits of NTFS.
That's fairly simple.  You can't run two different file system types
on the same partition, but you can run them on the same drive with
different partitions.
     Strangely enough, FAT is faster than HPFS under Windows NT at
the moment.


>You didn't mention WPS as an OS/2 feature that NT doesn't have though (
>I know you praised it before though).

     He did - "object-oriented shell".  I deleted that text, though.

					-Phil


-- 
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Phil Lafornara         				1 Microsoft Way         
philipla@microsoft.com				Redmond, WA 98052-6399 
Note:  Microsoft doesn't even _know_ that these are my opinions. So there.
Xref: sparky comp.os.os2.advocacy:4992 comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy:2094