Newsgroup: it.comp.os.os2
Titolo: altro che lo SCOUG (forward)


Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2001 15:55:37 -0000
Subject: [eCS] Report eCS demo by Mensys in Brussels
 
I'd like to share a short report on my first personal eCS 
experience, during the eCS demo at the Belgian OS/2 User 
Group, done by Mensys. There might be some inaccuries in this 
report, because it's been over a very busy week since I 
attended this presentation and unfortunately I don't have a 
photographical memory.
Joachim Benjamins and Roderick Klein from Mensys were invited 
to show eCS (release candidate) at the June 8 meeting of the 
OS/2 User Group Belgium.
They brought two machines with them to do the presentation, a 
desktop machine and a laptop. We had those machines connected 
to a VGA-projector w/ screen and the other on a very nice, 
very large Philips flat plasma screen. I don't know the specs 
of those machines and wether they had SCSI on board.
IIRC, they first showed the boot to Desktop from CD and 
explained that you are able to boot to a fully working eCS 
desktop this way, including internet support through USB 
modem.
To demo the installation process, they started booting the 
desktop machine from CD and when the pre-boot configuration 
text screen came up, paused a little while to explain some of 
the options on this screen. Of course, the SCSI boot options 
were all there, as well as other options related to video, 
etc. Even though pure text mode, the screen layout looked 
quite professionally done IMO.
Then they started the actual installation, and paused again to 
explain about another graphical dialog window with several 
installation options. Then they continued the installation to 
the point where the progression gauge is displayed. At some 
point a very cool animation is played and everything seems to 
be very well layed out, well polished and easy to use and 
understand. Let me tell you that the graphical part of the 
install looks great, all enhanced with new eStyler controls, 
etc.
With the first installation phase in progress, Joachim talked 
about some of the work that had be done to come to the current 
status and explained what's in the pipeline for eCS. They also 
had some interesting things to share about multimedia support 
and how Mensys is working with several companies to improve 
this aspect in eCS. They also talked about what difficulties 
still have to be overcome in developing and improving eCS. 
Difficulties of technical, economical, legal and "political" 
nature.
The first installation phase ended without any hickups in 
about 9 minutes or so. Then came time to reboot and that's 
where the only problem in the whole presentation occured : the 
machine failed to reboot after the first installation phase. 
They explained what they thought was going on, but I didn't 
catch many of that, and I got the impression that they didn't 
have a clue either.
Anyway, what they did was start all over again, but this time 
using another CD containing the very latest eCS track, that 
they had received just the same day or the day before. On this 
one, the boot logo (which looks very nice) was modified once 
again so they told us. Everything went smooth from that point 
on, and the first installation phase completed even faster 
than the first attempt.
No problems during reboot this time, and on to the second 
installation phase. At this stage, it clearly shows that 
there's still a lot of work to do to reach the same polish and 
ease-of-use as the first installation phase. Here, some of the 
well-known IBM installers show up. However, I also noticed how 
the WarpGuides are used to install a printer : very nice, very 
well done. Networking install seems the same as it always was, 
except that some dialog windows with help text pop up to guide 
the user through the install, or at least provide some 
meaningfull information about what is going.
I'm not sure, but I think they then did a second reboot to 
completely finish the installation.
Afterwards, some of the eCS features were discussed, including 
DToC which was briefly demonstrated in a connection to a 
machine of one of the attendees, and ofcourse WiseMachine was 
also demonstrated and discussed.
To summarize, Mensys did a succesful presentation of eCS in 
Belgium, and to me eCS looks ready for the masses. The 
installer works and is *much *faster then ever before, eCS has 
some very nice interface enhancements, and of course the 
feature set and the included software collection can hardly be 
matched by other operating systems today. However, it still 
needs improvement in some areas, of which networking 
installation is the most important IMO. Multimedia support 
should be improved as well, and it is very reassuring that 
Mensys amongst others is currently working hard on this. 
Personally, I'd like to have more GUI updates in the version 
following v1.0 :-) Some of the icons look really sharp, but 
I'd like to have *all the icons on the system look that way. I 
also don't care too much for the bitmap backgrounds in 
folders, but that of course is purely personal taste and easy 
to solve.
-----------8<---------------
-- 

 I'd like to have *all the icons on the system look that way.
Alessandro, questo e' per te, no?
 :-)
-- 
Gabriele

In article <RKPJVcEcJLrv-pn2-yzjmJyedLhok@localhost>,
ggamba.sp...@tiscalinet.it
 (Gabriele Gamba) wrote:
 >> Personally, I'd like to have more GUI updates in the version 
 >> following v1.0 :-) Some of the icons look really sharp, but 
 >> I'd like to have *all the icons on the system look that way.
 >
 >Alessandro, questo e' per te, no?
x quello che mi hanno pagato ho fatto anche troppo (molto + di quanto
pattuito)...
sembra una cazzata ma le icone disponibili mi sono costate oltre
un mese di lavoro a tempo pieno...
-- 
bye
Alessandro Cantatore
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