From: x90wardell@gw.wmich.edu
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Letter to Byte Magazine
Date: 5 Jan 93 16:53:07 EST
Organization: Western Michigan University

Here is a letter I sent to Byte Magazine.  I thought OS/2 users might find
it interesting.  My subscription to Byte is about to run out.

======================


Byte Magazine			January 5, 1992
P.O Box 550
Hightstown, NJ 08520

To the Editors:

	In response to the rather significant number of letters I have received
from Byte regarding my impending subscription runout, I thought I would write a
brief  letter explaining why I have chosen not to resubscribe to your magazine.
	Before I subscribed to Byte, I bought it off the newsstand quite
occasionally to read the very impartial and interesting articles and
commentaries in your magazine.  Since I subscribed, however, a noticeable
change has occurred in your magazine.  That change is Windowstm. 
	I used to use Windows every day.  Many of our customers still use
Windows.  I was a constant user from version 3.0 on (occasional user of 2.11). 
However, last Spring OS/2 2.0 was released and after trying that I decided to
move on.  OS/2 clearly was better than Windows in many respects.  I could run
my Windows programs quite well along with my DOS applications.  Your magazine
didn't even mention OS/2 being released.  I was bothered by this since Windows
3.1 received an extreme amount of attention from your publication.  A small
article on OS/2 would have been appropriate but that was simply not the case. 
In fact, I did not see much mention of OS/2 until Jerry Pournelle's article on
it last Fall.  I am not a great fan of Pournelle (read his Sci-Fi books
however) and reading his articles are rather tedious.  Nevertheless, I read the
article and it was not much of a treat considering it took him 6 months to try
OS/2.
	The final blow was your "Is Unix Dead" cover story.  Within this
article, no mention of OS/2 was made.  Your forecasts for the OS world not only
failed to mention OS/2 but Taligent.  I am not a great fan of IBM but to simply
ignore their huge presence in the corporate world is downright foolish. 
Considering that OS/2 received almost no coverage and it is out at the store, I
was appalled to see a cover story about an OS that was not even in beta at the
time and probably won't be released until next September.  Furthermore, before
devoting so many of your articles to this unfinished OS, you might have tried
to discover firsthand, as I have, that Windows NT runs Windows programs much
slower than OS/2 and won't run DOS programs that do anything remotely unusual
(don't even think about running video games under it).  
	From a business standpoint, bowing before Windows might make sense.  It
is the "hot" thing out there presently.  However, if I want to read another
Windows type magazine, I might as well subscribe to PC Magazine which is more
up to date news-wise and is cheaper.  Personally, I wish Byte had not chosen to
go down the path of bowing to Microsoft Windows.  Most of our customers that
run Windows 3.1 do so only because they only have 4 megs of memory and will
move to OS/2 2.1 this Spring or Summer when they upgrade to 8 megs of memory. 
By the way, Windows NT won't run very well on 8 megs -- unlike OS/2.
	Thank you for your time and I wish you the best in your endeavors.

								Sincerely,

								Bradley Wardell                                                    

								Purchasing Manager
								Stardock Systems
 


======================================

	Just trying to do my part.  PLus, I am quite disgusted with Byte.

							-Brad


Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy