Stewart Honsberger wrote in a message to Ray Hyder:

 RH> The truth is that IBM simply lacked the management gut's to carry a 
 RH> technology forward that would put IBM on almost every desktop on the 
 RH> planet.  Very sad...  - ray  

 SH> The question is - would you *WANT* to run the "consumer OS"?
 SH> Support and applications aside - what happens when IBM
 SH> starts to cater to the idiots and add things like "active
 SH> desktop" to OS/2, and/or integrate their web browser? Or
 SH> when they start concentrating on the pretties so much that
 SH> OS/2 starts to lose it's stability? 

OS/2 is not stable because it lacks a pretty face.  WIN is not unstable
because it has easy install routines, or cute little dodads hanging around.
WIN is not structually sound, OS/2 is.  You can do whatever you want with it,
it will still be stable, you can do what you want with WIN, it will still be
unstable.

 SH> Or when they release fixpacks on CD bundled with a manual, a 
 SH> warranty card, and an $80 price tag? 

That would be bad, but nobody, or few people seem to mind much with WIN.

 SH> I'm sorry, I'd much rather run the little guy. OS/2 is
 SH> stable because it's aimed at people who know what they're
 SH> doing, not the general populace. Co-incidentally, that's
 SH> also why I like Linux so much. 

WIN is not a simple OS, in fact, it's a mess.  How the user must interface
with it is up to the designers, doesn't have a lot to do with the particular
design of the OS.  Because someone writes a simple install routine doesn't
make the OS easy to use.  We had 10,000 computer illiterates running UNIX for
around 10 years, they didn't know what an OS was, what a file was or anything
else about computers, just like most WIN users.  They now all run WIN, and
they have a ton more problems than they did with UNIX.  At any rate, OS/2 does 
have a pretty face, looks about the same as WIN95, it does have easy install
routines, for itself as well as apps.  OS/2 is not for computer literates any
more than WIN is, it is designed for the desktop, just like WIN.

                                              Jack 
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