🚀 go-pugleaf

Nicholas S. wrote:
> On Sat, 8 Feb 2003 03:58:48 UTC, Victor Bien <nospam.vbien@attglobal.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>>   What about applications?  Well for sure it is more limited than the 
>>razzmatazz in Windows and Linux but what there is of it is very good. 
> 
> 
> To me, there seems to have been an unfortunate myth that OS/2 does not
> have applications. Personally, I've never had any problem obtaining an
> application for just about anything I want to do. Thanks to EMX and the
> OS/2 developer community, and the open-source philosophy in the Unix
> community, it is possible to use just about everything available for
> Linux.
> 
> The notable exception is games, which I guess is an important market for
> home PCs. There seems to be little or no hope of getting games for OS/2
> while a closed-source culture persists amongst commercial developers.
> 
> 
>>   Like the share market most software publishers don't publish for OS/2 
>>because there is no "momentum" even though the "fundamentals" are sound. 
> 
> 
> Whether or not the fundamentals are sound depends on what you mean by
> "fundamentals". OS/2 has sound engineering fundamentals, but unsound
> economics and marketing fundamentals.

   By "fundamentals" I mean the product has intrinsic merit.  It is a 
product that has market "potential" which has not been adequately 
realised.  As we know markets can "defy gravity" continuing to accept 
things where there it no fundamental reason for doing so.  The tech bust 
of April 2000 was the latest dramatic example of that.

> 
> 
>>  There is always the possibility that something will cause the 
>>fundamentals to break thru momentum.
> 
> 
> I don't know about that. The average computer user knows and cares less
> than nothing about engineering fundamentals; otherwise they would have
> abandoned MS-DOS and MS Windows on the first day it crashed. I can only
> ever see OS/2 and eComStation being a niche market.

   Well agreed that OS/2 can only be a niche market for the foreseeable 
future.  However, M$ does have a policy of forcing users to their newer 
versions by cutting off support at certain dates.  I think Win98 support 
will terminate June 2003.  Lots of people are reluctant to move on from 
Win98.  What will happen later on when they have to move to XP?

   IBM has shown itself incapable of promoting OS/2 successfully.  I 
have been arguing since 1996 that us users who value the product can DIY 
promote it; not for IBM's sake but for our own.  Is this worth doing? 
Well it wouldn't be if IBM did indeed abandon the product so that it is 
the same vintage as Windoze 3.11.  But as I have shown this is not the 
case.  OS/2 is right up there with everything.  So the task for DIYfers 
is keeping potential users informed what the possibilities are.  They 
can then make an informed choice *including* OS/2 in their calculations.

   Can DIY make a difference to the market place as a whole?  Well as 
isolated individuals no.  But, if anyone who has an interest plays an 
*active* role in helping to diffuse information to all and sundry and 
who in turn helps the diffusion process then the lack of mass 
advertising can be overcome to some extent.  I think OS/2 users are 
doing this to some extent.  OS2Ezine is an example and the prominent 
posters to public OS/2 newsgroups are another.  I'm doing my bit. 
That's why I post what I post.

   If OS/2 users all become little entrepreneurs you have to do some of 
the type of thinking entrprepreneurs do.  One of these is to ask the 
question who are most likely to be interested?  Well perhaps visitors of 
this newsgroup but I think more generally people with a technical bent 
and possibly some business users.  For the time being (certainly not on 
the horizon) we can forget about gamers (which is not to say there are 
not games for OS/2 - there are some notably from Stardock Systems).

   Let me get a bit more specific.  I have a few Warp 4 licenses most of 
"upgrade" status.  Anyone who wants to play with OS/2 if not diving head 
first into full blooded usage can buy these off me.  To be fully legal 
you can probably still get any old OEM license going back to version 1 
copies at trash & treasure markets and just file a piece of paper and 
your legal!  I think I have one of these.  To help you along you can get 
all that and then leave it as piece of paper status as well.  I would 
burn an installation image onto CDs and send that as well.  On this CD 
would be Warp "fixed" to the latest "free" levels for Warp 4 (called 
4.50) plus a heap of installation packages for you to install some 
shareware and freeware.  One of these would be the SciTech video driver 
package.  The APC Warp 4 of mid 2001 would also be a legal basis for 
such a CD.

   The CD would be set at VGA only and then you'd install the driver 
which is capable of addressing a wide variety of video cards (its very 
uncomfortable to operate the WPS (Workplace Shell) at 640 x 480 16 
colours!).

   I'd be willing to make such packages available for AU$25.

   Just a few basic facts.  OS/2 will run from an extended partition. 
It does not have to run from drive C:  Thus is can be installed on the 
same disk as Win9x.  The only restriction is that the main boot 
partition be inside 1024 cylinders of your HD (8.4GB with LBA). 
However, I would recommend that you install onto a second computer. 
This computer does not have to be the latest and greatest.  I would 
recommend at least a first generation ATX mainboard machine plus all 
relevant pieces as a starting point.  Since people are casting off their 
old gear faster than ever you can build up or have one built up by your 
local PC supplier quite cheaply.  All the hardware you might buy can be 
reused in a Windoze or Linux machins if this doesn't work out.  So you 
don't risk much getting into experimenting with OS/2.  With a KVM switch 
you don't even have to buy another monitor. keyboard or mouse!  When you 
get my CD and some boot diskettes you would partition a HD and XCOPY or 
UNZIP the contents of the CD onto the HD and reboot.  With a bit of luck 
you can be using the thing in an hour!  The CD would have EMX, Mozilla 
1.2.1, StarOffice 5.1 as well the supplied Bonus Pack which are 
applications you can immediately use.

   Next if you network the thing to say a W machine and run Safefire 
you'd could have the OS/2 machine as an internet router inside a day. 
So if you have several W machine you want to access the internet all at 
the same time here is a solution that won't cost much and you have other 
very interesting things to play with.

   Once you get to know Warp 4.50, which is what my CD would get you to, 
you'll then have something in front of you to help assess whether you 
would like to move to 4.52 which will cost real money you have to pay 
IBM; for that money you get the right to 2 years of on-line updates and 
periodic CDs posted to you.