OS/2

From: Bill Pechter <pechter_at_pechter.dyndns.org>
Date: Sat Jan 13 09:11:22 2001

> My OS/2 box routes internet traffic for seven other machines pulling a
> total of 770kbps off my cable modem while running this mailer, eight or
> more copies of netscape, playing MPEGS off of the internet and burning a
> cd all at once. I routinely have uptimes measured in weeks not hours
> though since this is also my personal computer in addition to being the
> burner and router, I mess with it a lot. Swapping cdrom drives or cards
> requires a reboot.....

I love OS/2... It's the closest thing to VAX/VMS reliability in a
Non-Unix OS that can run some PC apps.

If IBM had only kept the funding and kept it compatible with Win32 --
but when I was there the customers demanded RedmondNT and Redmond95
and the boys at the top said the money was in Windows.

They were running OS/2 2.11 internally when W95 came out.
They rolled out Warp to the desktops with the Lotus Win3 Smart
Suite. The OS/2 version of Smart Suite was so late and buggy at first
I gave up on it.

I'm wondering about Plex86 on OS/2. A VMWare-like setup to run the
buggy crashing MS stuff.

Bochs already works.

I've now got SmartSuite96/Millenium and SmartSuite4 here.
I've got WordPerfect 2000 Suite for Linux and W95.
I've got StarOffice.

Doesn't matter -- the employer's standardized on Office97 and is going
to W2000Pro and Office2000 Pro this year.

(I'm running Solaris or FreeBSD or Linux on the desktop and only booting
into W98 when I have to run MS software.)

I found out the master license price to my dept to order W2000 is $20
per machine -- very scary.

OS/2 is great if you only had good apps available.

--Bill
Received on Sat Jan 13 2001 - 09:11:22 GMT