From: "Robert Comer" 

Hi Egan, nice to see you around here again!

I'm very much aware of OS/2's shortcomings, as well as its strengths, but
the point was that it's plainly better software wise than Win3.1 and Win95,
yet it didn't displace the bad.

> Not really. IBM mishandled OS/2 horribly all throughout its life.

No doubt about that.

>First
> they associated it with the PS/2 (limit PCs to 286 chips, yeah right!)
> with MicroChannel. Thus they had their clock promptly cleaned by Compaq,
> and updated OS/2 2.0 for the 386, but by then the association had stuck.

Microchannel was yet another better computer product that didn't win (plug
and play that really worked!) -- IBM's problem with it was licensing and
pricing.

> By OS/2 3.0 that system was fairly capable, but the installation was a
> real pain (earlier this year I finally threw out that box of floppies),
> plus networking wasn't well integrated, thinking of it makes me shiver.

I actually got into it at the 2.1 level with Microchannel hardware -- it
was nice to say the least -- a bit hoggish, but a properly outfitted
machine was rock solid stable, something I haven't reached yet with Windows
and the hardware we have today.

3.0 the first release wasn't bad, and like you say, the install and the
networking was a bit odd -- that was pretty much "fixed" in the
3.0 "Connect" version.  I ran a Lotus Notes server for years on
that without a single crash. I ran it on a '486 DX4/100 with 32M of RAM, by
far the smallest hardware requirements of any Notes server in our
corporation (all others were NT based then), yet we had the record for
least problems. I had got another job so wasn't doing OS/2 desktop anywhere
else but at home by that time.

> OS/2 4.0 was the first competent version, IMHO.

It had some install and hardware problems, but I used it at home for a long
time, and what I move the Notes server to when the hardware died for the
above. (We moved the Notes server to our iSeries after that and still have
the most solid server.)

>But IBM didn't know how
> to market it, the IBM PC company was actively hostile to it,

Yep.  That was the main problem with it, not the software. 

>there were
> still some issues with Presentation Manager and its single input queue
> problems (never fixed).

I never had a problem with PM, and as for the SIQ, I had an add-on program
that would break that kind of deadlock.  I forget the name of it now
though.
:(

>So OS/2 was finally and irretrievably doomed by
> Microsoft's backstabbing, proprietary DLL software, an upgrade treadmill
> that IBM wouldn't invest enough to match, and that lock on OEM preloads
> (determined to be illegal, but too late to save OS/2). With OS/2 one can
> say that everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, all of its life.

I can't argue about anything there!  It's really to bad as I still liked
the way things worked -- it fit my style pretty well.

> So it's arguable that OS/2, although a better fundamental design, wasn't
> well enough executed, delivered or supported to make it better software,
> and it was badly handicapped by its vendor plus Microsoft's shenanigans.

Have you forgot the Win3.1 resource problems, the Win95 Win16Mutex lockups
and plug and play that never plugged and played well, not to mention the
memory leaks and just general instability of Win95 for years that never was
solved. Even after they revved it several times up through WinME.

> I don't regard OS/2 as a valid counter-example for all of these reasons.
> One can imagine that IBM's OS/2 debacle is one reason for it deciding to
> support Linux at arms-length -- without trying to build some IBM distro.
> The other reason is probably its overhead and limited success with AIX.

Actually I haven't figured that one out yet, other than maybe they just
really don't want to be responsible for the OS part so much. (though they
really do make good OS's for the bigger hardware -- OS400 and the mainframe
OS's)  I'm not much of a fan of AIX, just another UNIX with hardware that
cost to much for what it did.

> PS -- I still have an OS/2 partition, but I hardly ever boot it anymore.

One of my PC's here at home dual boots OS/2 V4 and Lindows. (most of the
time in Lindows) And I run WinME on my main PC when I play games. 

- Bob Comer



"Egan Orion"  wrote in message
news:3e616539$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> Not really. IBM mishandled OS/2 horribly all throughout its life. First
> they associated it with the PS/2 (limit PCs to 286 chips, yeah right!)
> with MicroChannel. Thus they had their clock promptly cleaned by Compaq,
> and updated OS/2 2.0 for the 386, but by then the association had stuck.
>
> By OS/2 3.0 that system was fairly capable, but the installation was a
> real pain (earlier this year I finally threw out that box of floppies),
> plus networking wasn't well integrated, thinking of it makes me shiver.
>
> OS/2 4.0 was the first competent version, IMHO. But IBM didn't know how
> to market it, the IBM PC company was actively hostile to it, there were
> still some issues with Presentation Manager and its single input queue
> problems (never fixed). So OS/2 was finally and irretrievably doomed by
> Microsoft's backstabbing, proprietary DLL software, an upgrade treadmill
> that IBM wouldn't invest enough to match, and that lock on OEM preloads
> (determined to be illegal, but too late to save OS/2). With OS/2 one can
> say that everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, all of its life.
>
> So it's arguable that OS/2, although a better fundamental design, wasn't
> well enough executed, delivered or supported to make it better software,
> and it was badly handicapped by its vendor plus Microsoft's shenanigans.
>
> I don't regard OS/2 as a valid counter-example for all of these reasons.
> One can imagine that IBM's OS/2 debacle is one reason for it deciding to
> support Linux at arms-length -- without trying to build some IBM distro.
> The other reason is probably its overhead and limited success with AIX.
>
> Egan
>
> PS -- I still have an OS/2 partition, but I hardly ever boot it anymore.
>
>
> Robert Comer wrote:
> >>I offer Windows 3.x...95 vs. OS/2 as a counterexample.
> >
> >
> > Well, that kind of squashes Egan's law.
> >
> > - Bob Comer
> >
> >
> > "Jeff Shultz"  wrote in message
> > news:3e615353{at}w3.nls.net...
> >
> >>Egan Orion wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>An update of Gresham's Law... for software:
> >>>
> >>>http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8059
> >>
> >>I offer Windows 3.x...95 vs. OS/2 as a counterexample.
> >>
> >>--
> >>Jeff Shultz
> >>I don't speak for anyone, and only One speaks for me.
> >
> >
> >
>

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