From: postma@gaul.csd.uwo.ca (WARREN POSTMA)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Microsoft Employee Postings (why now?)
Date: 29 Sep 92 21:05:20 GMT
Article-I.D.: julian.1992Sep29.210520.1406
Organization: Computer Science Dept., Univ. of Western Ontario, London, Canada

In article <rhoward.717447529@matd> rhoward@matd.gatech.edu (Robert L. Howard) writes:
>It has sort of occurred to me that the Microsoft types seem
>to go into posting frenzies periodically.  Has anyone seen
>a correlation here?  Here's what I have noticed:

If I criticise you am I on MS's payroll? If that was so, I'd gladly 
criticize you for I am a student and neeed the money. But it's not so.

I am actually an OS/2 fan, a converted DOS person with a long time
envy of MAC, X-Windows, and Amiga machines.  
What's more I tried Windows and found it was like a Lada; sure it had
all the requisite parts required to drive it, but whenever you tried
to do anything interesting with it, like actually getting somewhere, 
it gave out on me and died.

Nevertheless, I do not Hate MS.  I rather like MS.  I rather like
Gordon Letwin, a lucid man with interesting thoughts, even if he
does tend to get angry when he is bugged.   I rather like Bill
Gates, although I'm awfully jealous.  And I also happen to like
IBM, and I know that whoever wins the OS battle it's not going
to be whomever can slam the opposition the most.  THe politics
in this base are fascinating, and the only thing that has more
controlling influence than the politics is the misinformation
and hype.

OS/2 will succeed or not succeed based on whether or not a critical
mass of applications makes it to market before another successor
offers a demonstrably simpler or better upward migration route.
MS has tried the "It's compatible and gives you more than DOS,
while staying in DOS, and keeping it's limitations" route. OS/2
offers backwards compatibility from within a new framework,
meaning we need new backup programs, and we need new device drivers
if we want to run them with OS/2 applications, and OS/2 removes the 
limitations of DOS and provides more services than any dos extension
ever could.

Which will win?  Well Windows has a  heck of a lot of apps out
there now.  Luckily OS/2 runs them.   Unluckily, most are not
worth running. 95% or so are rather annoying and more cumbersome
than their DOS counterparts. IMHO, WP 5.1 for Windows, and 
so on are in this category. Then again, some Windows apps are
beautiful when run on big machines. THese include MS Works for
Windows, and Ami Pro.  Both of them positively blew me away.

OS/2 is not crap and neither is Windows.  IBM has shown in its 
advertising that it wishes to compare Windows and OS/2, and
highlight the OS/2 superiorities in Design.  Of course the
design religion is superior to the kludgey design of Windows.
MS's Gordon Letwin *wrote* most of the 1.0 spec, and the 2.0
religion differs in few ways in therms of it's "theology".
The underlying principles, values, and absolutes of OS/2 are
it's strength.

The strenght of Windows its that it runs on top of the largest
installed base - DOS, and you can go out and put it on your computer
and run it.  Even a 286 with 2 meg of RAM.  Of course this is just
as bad as OS/2 on a 386sx/16 with 4 meg, but you can actually do it.
The initial plunge into windows costs $69 or so.  THat is a major
strength.  Sure you've pretty much got to buy a new computer if you
want to make Windows useable.  Even then, Windows is little more
than a user interface - just try to do Operating-System type things
with it like making it multiuser, multitasking, or resource-efficient.

But apart from indirect discussions which centre on these comparisons,
your post slams these MS guys, so they can slam you back.  What good
does it do?

If I actually read a lot of this crap before I got OS/2 I would
probably have decided to go for Coherent or DesqView/X and rolled
my own everything. It would probably have been fun.  But I love
HPFS, WPS, CUA/SAA, OO, GPI, DLLs, and all the other neato
acronyms that OS/2 gives me to wow my friends with.

But please lets stop slam fights with MS.  Even if what you said
is true, so what.  IBM urged their employees to do a similar thing
when OS/2 was nearing GA.  

Warren