On (19 Apr 97) Chris Martin wrote to Karel Sana...
Hi Chris,
 CM> How right you are, GeoWorks is the ultimate Multitasking OS. Now
 CM> all we gotta do is get rid of the reliance on DOS... 
New Deal Office will still have to use DOS for booting, and for the file
system.  The good thing is that it will (if I have read everything
right, and my conversation with the Caldera representative is correct)
come with OpenDos as that DOS.  Remember that once GEOS starts, the only
things DOS does are related to the file system.
 CM> I _HAVE_ heard that GeoWorks and OS/2 is the ultimate, will have
 CM> to try it, and see.....
Having run GEOS with both DOS and as a task in OS/2, I can speak a bit
about this.  The overhead of OS/2 is so much greater.  The elegence of
GEOS is that it doesn't take state-of-the-art equipment to run it.  New
Deal Office 97 should maintain this when it is released.  On the other
hand, the reason I use it with OS/2 is that they really do complement
one another.  OS/2 has all the communications strengths that Geoworks
Ensemble 2.01 lacks.  Because they both have a similar look and feel
though, it is very easy to use the strengths of each.
GEOS with OS/2 does have a few quirks though, and I would be remiss if I
didn't mention them.  Hard disk drive access is fine, floppy disk access
is wierd.  It is slow as GEOS looks for the drive.  Floppy operations
are quite slow.  If I have something on floppy disk that I need to work
on with one of the GEOS programs, I usually use OS/2 to copy it to an
HDD directory.  That way things go much smoother.  Printing is another
area where it doesn't always work smoothly at first.  One has to figure
out the correct settings for the DOS session, as well as for the OS/2
printer object, then it is acceptable.
Anyway, overall, I like the speed of GEOS and OpenDos (as on this laptop
which doesn't have the power for either OS/2 or any form of Windows).
If the hardware is up to it, I really like the combination of OS/2 and
GEOS.  It is a very powerful and flexible system.
TTYL,
Stephen
Team OS/2, Team GEOS
OS/2 & Geoworks Ensemble - What a combo!
... OS/2 could mean "Obviously Superior." - John Dvorak
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