From: rsrodger@wam.umd.edu (Yamanari)
Subject: Re: Why Windows NT will fail -----
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 23:17:29 GMT

In article <1992Dec11.191116.90161@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu> sjb5@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (STACY JOHN BEHRENS) writes:
>>       Right-o.  And this is the main reason OS/2 is doing so
>>       poorly in the general user market.
>>
>informaly asked how OS/2 had been selling recently.  Invariably they said it
>was selling pretty well.  Not a barn burner by any means, but it was selling


	Is this supposed to mean something? 
 
	"How's it selling?" (Customer asking random worker)
	"Pretty well" (Random worker with no idea what he is talking about)

	I bet you'd get the same response if you asked abouyt any 
	product--or even a product you'd made up.
 

>That is possibly the screwiest logic I have heard in a while.  Once a person
>already has a system that runs most availlable apps, why should they wait for


	Right.  That system, in the case we were arguing, for most
	people is DOS/Windows.


>a system that is still a promise?  People who are running OS/2 are looking for
>OS/2 apps.  Not a lot are out yet, so they are told to wait for them.  They


	Exactly.  You just cancelled your own point.


>aren't interested in waiting for NT.  NT is simply not it the picture at this
>point.


	I can't even count the number of times I've said this myself.


>they are skipping version 3 and going strait to version 4 for OS/2.  Their


	Yeah right.  Just like WP is "skipping 5.1 to go for 6.0"..

	Get over it.  Corel is feeding you a string af yarn to amuse
	you and keep you busy (i.e. selling 2.5 to the suckers who
	don't even consider the software's upgrade future nor the
	fact that the program they are buying is almost a year out of
	date...) 


>stated reason for doing so is that they wish to avoid the further delays that
>would be caused by releasing another version in between.  This does NOT mean
>that they have no future plans on the OS/2 platform.


	If you believe that, I've got some swam-- beach front property
	to sell you.  This is, roughly, parrallel to Motorola with their
	"The 68060 will be so good we're going to skip the '050!" nonsense.

	If MS played this game ("We're going to SKIP Windows 4.0 and go 
	right to 5.0!") you'd be making a big stink---heck, you guys already
	did with the spew over Win NT being called "3.1"..


>operating speeds between Windows under DOS and under OS/2.  (Windows 3.0 that
>is)  Somethings are a little faster, some are a little slower, but all in all,


	That's the point.  Win3.0 was junk, pure and simple.  If I 
	refused (read: turned my nose up at it because it stunk) 
	to use it then, why should I suddenly be impressed with 
	OS/2's ability to emulate a piece of garbage?


>of "speed" between WinOS2 and Windows are people just being trite about the
>whole thing.  Unless there is something wrong with how the system is


	Nonsense.  Win31 is *much* faster than WINOS2 on the same machine.
	If you factor in a decent video driver, you get into speed differences
	that are *obscene*.  


>interacting with your computer, the difference in overall speed is for all
>real life purposes, negligable.


	In real life, nobody who uses Windows for work is using
	3.0.


>In most cases security is rather pointless unless it is a multiuser system.  I
>certainly don't need to be logging on to my own PC.  Besides there are


	I find it very appealing.  As it stands, I use DRDOS and dual 
	booting to keep people out of my system.  (Giving me,
	effectively, a hard to get by password-on-boot for OS/2, too,
	as long as I remember to set the system up to boot DOS before
	I turn it off.)


>most rif-raff off the machine)  Also tell me honestly, do you *really need*
>Unicode.  Granted OS/2 should have it, (and probably will someday) but I don't


	Yes.  Without a doubt.  Of course,I have special needs
	thanks to my major (foreign language--Japanese and some
	Chinese) that make Unicode a necessity (well, not exactly,
	but it will/would make life *much* easier for all of us).  

	Add in a little linguistics (phonology) and Unicode becomes
	even more useful (no more of the font shuffle to get to the
	IPA..).  

	I can honestly say that the next OS I buy WILL support Unicode
	or (at least) 16 bit character sets (I say this because I'm not
	sure if the 16bit scheme apple implemented in 7.1 is Unicode
	cleverly renamed [They're calling it WorldScript?] or 
	somethinr proprietary..)

	Retrofitting does not work well.  Look at DOS-->32MB partitions,
	EMS, memory managers, etc. etc.--none of this worked right 
	(and even now, doesn't work perfectly) for YEARS after people
	started trying to add them in.  


>how many people are unaware that Unicode exists.  Also, I challenge you to


	People shouldn't *have* to be "aware of Unicode".  By this
	time it should already have been implemented.  IBM should have
	known, especially since it would have made producing an OS/2
	equivelent of DOS/v a lot easier.

	(Has anyone succeeded in making an image of DOS/v?)

>walk into a store and buy a single NT application.  I have seen OS/2 apps in


	Are you being serious or witty?  Even someone as stupid as
	me can tell that there wont be any NT apps in the stores
	because NT doesn't exist yet.  


>stores.  Granted, very few, but they are availlable.  The same cannot be said
>about NT.  Right now there simply isn't a choice.


	I frequent computer stores a lot, often just to look around 
	and see what's new for various things (Amiga, Mac, PC) and
	see what people are buying, and I can tell you that I have
	only seen an OS/2 application in a store (retail or superstore)
	ONCE, and that was Word for PM 1.1 (or 1.0?)..
 


-- 
 Snout: O Bottom, thou art chang'd!  What do I see on thee?          
 Bottom: What do you see?  You see an ass-head of your own, do you?  
 ---"I despise mystics, they fancy themselves so deep, when they----
 ----aren't even superficial"    --Nietzsche   ---------------------
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy