(Excerpts from a message dated 09-21-99, Coridon Henshaw to Frits
Spieker,  original topic: It's over. Period)

Hi Coridon--

 FS> It is time to begin and have a serious look at alternative OS's to
 FS> use in the near future. Although OS/2 still does what it is supposed
 FS> to do (and good at that too!), it is falling further behind by the
 FS> day.

CH>I agree.  OS/2 works fine, and will continue to work fine, on '94-era
  > hardware.  Unfortunately, '94-era hardware is rather hard to come
  >by these days.  Sure, it still works with modern hard drives,
  >CDROMs, keyboards, mice (most of them, at least) and floppy drives. 
  >But on the other hand, finding supported sound and video hardware
  >very difficult at best.  And forget about support for any of the new
  >and interesting devices such as Firewire DASD and portable MP3
  >players.

    Your cutoff date is a little early.  Warp 4 installed easily on my
vintage-97 ThinkPad 365XD, with a little help from the ThinkPad
utilities that I got from the Device Driver Pak.  In any case, OS/2 was
designed, originally, as an "Industrial Strength" operating system for
commercial users, and (with the exception of a short interval around the
time of the Warp 3 release) large commercial users are still the only
ones in IBM's self-defined market area for it.  I doubt if IBM will ever
again attempt to market OS/2 to the AIHUs or to the computer hobbyists.
My "evidence" is in IBM's current pricing policy for its newer OS/2
software, such as VA PL/I v 2.1 and Warp Server for e-Business; these
are priced considerably above what most inhabitants of this echo are
willing to pay.

    I doubt that any large commercial users want their employees playing
with videos or digital music on company time.  As far as new devices are
concerned, if those users want firewire DASD, drivers will be supplied.
Unlike other operating system vendors I won't name, IBM does not abandon
its large legacy customers!

CH>My poison, you ask?  If Mandrake Linux doesn't work out, I'll be
  >forced to switch to NT.  :-(

    Goodbye.  Those of us who consider OS/2 to be a tool, not a toy,
will stick with it.

    Regards,

        --Murray

___
 * MR/2 2.25 #120 * Never get carried away by a flood of logic

--- Maximus/2 2.02