Stewart Honsberger wrote in a message to Jack Stein:

 SH> know that IBM was forced into that. They were given a choice - 
 SH> just hours (NOT days) before the release of Win'95 (not an 
 SH> acronym, BTW). If they wanted to be able to bundle it with 
 SH> their machines, they had to quit MARKETING OS/2. Not "pull the 
 SH> plug" on it, but stop marketing it.

If they wanted to bundle it at all,  or if they wanted to get a good price?

This is interesting,  and the first that I've heard of this.  Where did you
come by this info?



 SH> They're aiming for the corporate market, where Microsoft 
 SH> doesn't have the large death grip on the market.

This was my impression as well,  that they are more interested in dealing with 
clients that are going to be medium to large sized businesses without taking
on all of the hassles involved in dealing with SOHO end users.



 JS> making sure retail stores have copies of OS/2 to sell,

 SH> What are they supposed to do, go the way of Microsoft and force 
 SH> them to shelve it? I've talked to computer store 
 SH> owners/managers, and if they don't say "OS-what?" they tell me 
 SH> stories that go something like "I got a case of 100 copies of 
 SH> Warp, and 6 months later returned 98 copies to IBM", "I tried 
 SH> to sell Warp, but people went straight to the Microsoft 
 SH> section", "Nobody has shown any interest in OS/2" ...

This reminds me of a visit I paid yesterday to a local computer store.  All of 
their scanner stuff was parallel-port interface,  and all of their cd burners
were IDE.  When I asked about SCSI I was told that they didn't carry _any_
SCSI stuff at all (and in a tone that suggested that they also wouldn't be
interested in selling me any if that's what I wanted to buy) and given the
excuse that it was "because the prices fluctuate too much"!



 SH>> I hope you're taken to court for libel.

 JS> IBM would not stand a chance, unless they used theirmoney, power and 
 JS> influence to stack the deck.

 SH> What I was trying to tell you is that you're either incredibly 
 SH> uninformed, or incredibly stupid.

I hope that messages in this echo can refrain from such personal attacks, 
regardless of how strongly you feel about things.  I certainly won't continue
any threads involving such (and that's _all_ I have to say on the subject).

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