Just found this little gem on the internet...


From: zoltian 
Subject: merlin review from Chris K. ( koresko{at}kepler.gps.caltech.edu)
Organization: Healey Communications Australia

Chris Koresko wrote:
> 
> I had the good fortune to obtain a copy of the Merlin golden code (retail
> upgrade version) earlier than most, and have had a good week now to play
> with it.  In light of the strong interest in this new version of IBM's
> premiere desktop OS, I thought it worthwhile to share my experiences.
> 
> First of all, let me say that I am not a newcomer to OS/2.  In fact, I
> upgraded my old DOS/Windows 3.0 system to the then-new OS/2 2.0, the first
> 32-bit version, instead of following the crowd to DOS/Windows 3.1.  I've
> stuck with OS/2 through 2.1 and Warp 3, and it has by and large served me
> quite well.  So from my perspective, Warp 4, aka "Merlin",
is more of an
> evolution than a radical departure.
> 
>                        Background:  Merlin vs. Warp
> 
> Back in when Warp 3 was released October 1994, a lot of people were using
> low-end 486 and even 386 machines with only 4 MB of memory.  For this
> reason, IBM worked hard to get Warp to run decently on minimal hardware.
> I've tried it on a lowball 4 MB 486 subnotebook, and though it runs a little
> slowly and beats on the disk a lot, it actually is usable.  While a fully
> tricked-out Connect install is quite a bit heavier in terms of memory and
> disk space requirements, you can install a pretty complete copy of the basic
> Warp OS, including its swapfile, into a 50 MB partition.  If you're willing
> to hack around a bit, and know what you're doing, you can get a usable copy
> into maybe a third of that space.
> 
> Of course, that optimization for performance on low-end hardware came at a
> price.  It must have been necessary to skip some useful features to shoehorn
> a real OS with a real object-oriented UI into such a small space.  With the
> large decrease in prices of disk space, CPU MIPS, and especially RAM over
> the last couple of years, it makes sense to optimize for more powerful
> hardare to get the benefits of more features, faster speed, a friendlier UI,
> and better stability.  With Merlin, IBM has done just that.
> 
> Examples: When you install the multimedia component in Warp, you get a
> brief video clip of a couple of colorful macaws in the \mmos2\movies
> directory.  In Warp, this is just a few hundred kilobytes.  With Merlin,
> that is replaced by a much longer clip that takes nearly 2 MB.  In Warp, you
> got a neat object-oriented Launchpad on the desktop; in Merlin, you get an
> updated version of the Lotus Smartcenter, renamed the WarpCenter, as a
> default.  But the old Launchpad is there too in case you want it.  In Warp,
> you got a built-in REXX interpreter; in Merlin, you also get an
> object-oriented REXX which can be used to build graphical apps.  Merlin also
> adds a bunch of stuff that Warp didn't have, including a Java interpreter
> (always installed) and development environment (installed at the user's
> option), fancy help, service, and diagnostic tools including artificial
> intelligence "wizards", and even more networking stuff than
Warp Connect.
> There's support for OpenDoc and OpenGL apps, as well as IBM's
"Open32" API
> which mimics portions of Microsoft's Win32 API to make it easier to port
> Windows apps.  And of course there's Merlin's most celebrated feature:  a
> VoiceType Navigation and Dictation package that allows the OS to be
> controlled by spoken commands (much like the tools that come free with some
> sound cards) and allows the user to actually *dictate* text into either a
> window or a speech-enabled application (much like tools that generally sell
> for ~$1000).  Oh, yeah:  it also comes with a lightweight headset with a
> noise-cancelling microphone.
> 
> To run Merlin, IBM recommends at least a 486-33 CPU, 12 MB RAM, and 100-300
> megs of disk space for the OS and tools.  The speech stuff relies heavily on
> fast floating-point processing, so a Pentium is needed along with another
> 8-12 megs of RAM.  Though a machine with these specs would have been
> high-end a couple years ago, this is pretty normal hardware today.
> 
> It's important to note that the hefty chunk of disk space a full Merlin
> install requires doesn't have to be on a single partition.  Many (most?) of
> the optional components can be placed on any partition that has the space
> available.  That'll be very useful for a lot of people who'd otherwise be
> faced with a massive amount of work backing up and repartitioning their
> drives in order to get ready for a Merlin install.  My Merlin boots off
> Warp's old 100 MB primary partition, with various optional components spread
> across the rest of the disk.  And, like earlier versions of OS/2, Merlin can
> easily be set up to boot off a logical partition.
> 
>                                 Installation
> 
> Merlin comes on four CDs and three floppies.  The CDs are: Operating system,
> networking, and BonusPak; a Device Driver Pak; Lotus Notes Mail 4.1; and an
> Application Sampler with a boatload of trial-version and beta applications.
> 
> The basic installation program will look pretty familiar to Warp users,
> except that it's smoother and slicker than before.  Merlin comes on a CD and
> three floppies.  You boot off the floppies, which load a minimal version of
> OS/2 that runs the text-mode part of the install program.  That transfers a
> lightweight copy of the OS to the hard drive, which is then booted to
> continue with the graphical part of the install.  Most hardware is
> autodetected (everything in my Dell Dimension XPS P120c was, including the
> Hitatchi IDE CD drive and ProAudio 16 card I added, except for the
> NE2000-clone Ethernet adapter).  If you choose the Advanced install option,
> the text-mode install program runs FDISK to let you choose your boot
> partition, and the graphical install program pops up a
"notebook" which lets
> you choose which features you want.  You click on some options, the CD and
> HDD churn for 15 minutes or so, and Merlin boots up.
> 
> I experienced exactly two installation glitches, one of which was my fault.
> The first one was an error message generated when the install tried to start
> a session to run the DSPINSTL program to set up the video.  Clicking the
> "Retry" button enabled it to continue with no ill effects. 
The second was
> that I specified the wrong IRQ and I/O addresses for my Ethernet card, with
> the result that networking didn't work until I corrected them using Warp's
> network setup program (MPTS).
> 
> The install program in the Upgrade version of Merlin is reputed to contain a
> "sniffer" which looks for a previous version of OS/2 on the
hard disk.  *If*
> it's like the sniffers in previous OS/2 upgrades, it modifies the install
> floppies to disable itself after the first time, so that if for some reason
> your system gets wiped out completely, you won't have to install an old OS/2
> to reinstall Merlin.
> 
> Like Warp Connect, Merlin has some rather clever installation options.  In
> addition to the regular CD install, you can use a special utility to make a
> big stack of floppies and install from those.  More useful are the network
> install options.  You can make a set of install disks that boot up and
> install Merlin using the CD drive on another machine on your network.  And
> that network, if I am not mistaken, can be running between serial or
> parallel ports connected via LapLink cables.  Very handy for installing on a
> notebook that has no CD drive!  Ethernet networks are supported too, of
> course.  And I believe there are automated procedures for installing to many
> remote workstations at once from a single CD, which sounds pretty cool if
> you have dozens of machines to manage but wasn't something I needed to deal
> with.
> 
>                                Running Merlin
> 
> So once it's installed, what is Merlin like?
> 
> The first thing you notice is that it's pretty.  There are tons of little
> tweaks including nicer screen backgrounds, nicer scrollbars and buttons, a
> new WarpSans system font, sharp 256-color icons, single-click Close
> buttons, and of course that nifty WarpCenter at the top of the screen.  The
> WarpCenter is a combination program launcher, task switcher, disk-space and
> CPU monitor, and clock.  It's object-oriented, though not quite as
> completely so as the old Launchpad or Stardock's OD Control Center.  I like
> it.
> 
> The next thing you notice is the speed.  On my 32 MB P120, everything seems
> faster and smoother than it did with Warp.  I believe a lot of that is due
> to the new GRADD video driver for my Trio64 video card, which in addition to
> being faster is free of the minor but annoying glitches in the Warp driver.
> I suspect that there are a lot of subtler tweaks to the underlying OS as
> well.  The overall impact is not dramatic, but it's noticable.  I feel as if
> I've upgraded from a P120 to, maybe, a P166.
> 
> Playing a video clip is a good way to show off the new video speed.  Even
> maximized on my 1024x768x256 screen, video clips are *smooth*.  I wouldn't
> have believed it was even *possible* to write to the screen that fast.  Best
> guess is that I'm seeing the new EnDIVE accelerated video system in action.
> 
> Most of the tools, including the Internet stuff, the BonusPak apps, and
> expecially multimedia players and editors, have been upgraded with new
> features and fancy new looks.  I'm especially fond of the new CD Player,
> which has gained a lot of configurability in addition to just looking nice
> sitting on the desktop.
> 
> The system feels more solid than before, too.  Though Warp crashes were rare
> enough that it's hard to get a good feel for the stability over a timescale
> of less than months, from having seen Merlin recover gracefully from fairly
> severe beatings I've given it, and I'm pretty sure it's going to prove
> itself to be more stable than Warp.  These beatings include a couple of
> crashes of the WPS, which Merlin dutifully restarted in the background while
> I continued to work, and an app or two freezing up and taking the message
> queue (still synchronous despite some misinformation published in PC Mag)
> with it.  The new SIQ fix, introduced in a Warp fixpack and apparently
> improved in Merlin, got things going again with little drama.
> 
>                                Compatibility
> 
> All of the apps I've tried so far have worked without any trouble.  The one
> exception is the new EPM editor that came with Merlin, which I suspect is
> getting confused by the presence of an older version I'd been using with
> Warp.
> 
> One potentially important compatibility issue that hasn't surfaced for me
> yet: Apparently, many programs are not written to call the WinInitialize (?)
> function at all the places they should.  With earlier versions of OS/2 that
> worked OK, but with Merlin it apparently does not.  The symptoms are
> reported to consist mostly of unexpected shutdowns of the affected apps, but
> can sometimes lead to shell crashes and even operating-system TRAPs.  In the
> week or so of using Merlin I haven't seen anything like this happen, but
> users should be aware of it.  I believe that IBM doesn't plan to change
> Merlin to accomodate the affected apps, and will rely on the ISVs to bring
> their code into compliance.
> 
> As for compatibility with hardware, all I can say is that 1) everything in
> my PC was supported directly, and 2) there are an awful lot of additional
> drivers on that extra CD.
> 
>                             Other Neat Features
> 
> There are a bunch of small changes that together make Merlin more
> comfortable and more efficient to use.  Here are a few examples:
> 
>  * You can now (optionally) mark text in a text box without going through a
> menu, and when you copy it (by pressing Enter) you don't get a
> carriage-return appended to it.
> 
>  * Double-clicking a WAV or MIDI file starts it playing immediately, with a
> lot less disk access than before.  No player or editor opens unless you
> specifically ask for it (from the Open-> menu choice).  Double-clicking the
> file again stops the playing.
> 
>  * Similarly, the System Sounds attatched to desktop events play more
> quickly than before.  And you can select from several Schemes for them.
> Personally, I've decided to use the sounds that came with the Roids
> shareware game - those are worth the registration price even if you don't
> play Roids.
> 
>  * FTP folders: I have my favorite Unix system's files available via
> drag&drop using this feature.  ftp.cdrom.com is set up that way too.  Saves
> time, looks cool.
> 
>  * Connections: From the Warp button, you can go through a few cascading
> menu levels to a selection of interesting Web sites.  Clicking one of these
> loads your browser (WebExplorer 2.0 by default).
> 
>  * Alt+Tab Switching: This is a shameless but welcome copy of the Windows
> 3.1 feature.
> 
>  * Speaking of Windows, Win32s Windows app support is supposed to be at the
> 1.25a level now.   Whoopee.  Actually, I guess this is probably important
> for some people.
> 
>                          Stuff I Haven't Tried Yet
> 
> Merlin is big.  Really big.  This is an OS designed to please just about
> anyone looking for a good general purpose computing environment, and it's so
--- Msged/2 4.00