Does OS/2 really stand a chance?
Jamie Curmi
I'm interested in knowing if anyone really believes OS/2 has a chance
against Win95. I have been an OS/2 advocate for a number of years now,
and I use OS/2 Warp at home. But I guess all the Win95 hype is getting
to me.
Before all the flames come in from either side, I am no MS-lemming. But
I guess I am an IBM-lemming, in that I think OS/2 is fantastic. But
that doesn't mean I am not worried about it's future.
I know I'll get flamed for this, but I think most of us know OS/2 will
be superior technology to Win95 (nowhere near as many kludges), and is
bound to be more stable (not being a 1.0 product, and not being a MS
product ;-). But will this mean anything to the average user?
It seems to me all MS has to do is produce an OS/2-Mac like interface
but prettier, put their name on it, and it will sell. Win95 may be the
kludge from hell, but will this be visible to your average user?
All they'll see is a pretty interface. They don't care about the
internals, as long as it will run the latest Word or Excel.
The hype really is too much. If you read the magazines and papers it
appears OS/2 Warp doesn't even exist. Most people you mention it to
say "What's OS/2?", but if you ask them if they have heard of
"Windows 95" they all have.
If MS can market something with pure hype to the extent they have,
imagine what they'll do when the product is selling. It is really
depressing.
Some of the visibility problem of OS/2 has to be the fault of IBM.
After all these years, their marketing is still as bad as ever.
You just have to look at Warp advertising on Australian TV. When
Warp was first release, we got the "It's a warped world" commercial -
the one where you don't see the screen, just a bunch of people talking
and looking amazed. Very lame! Just the american commercial, not
even an attempt by IBM Australia to put some Australians behind monitors
and look amazed. Not even a screen shot. Anyway, we saw these adds for
a few weeks, and then...nothing. And still nothing. That was the total
of IBM's TV campaign. We never saw the nuns commercial. Zilch!
What happened to this massive marketing budget IBM set aside for Warp?
Here are some more examples of OS/2 lack of visibility here:
+ OS/2 Applications in software stores is just about non-existant.
Some haven't even heard of OS/2. Ask them about Windows95 and....
+ A few weeks back I was out to dinner with some friends. One guy
started to ask me about the internet, and how could he get on to it.
Another guy said, "wait for Windows 95, it'll have all you need".
I quickly said, "Why wait...OS/2 Warp will get you on now". Everyone
asked "what's that?". No one had even heard of it.
+ Another example. My wife works for a big Japanese company in Australia.
She was discussing windows with one of the Computer people there. He
was very excitied to tell her that he had just been to a seminar by MS
on Windows95, and that they would be getting it as soon as it was
released. He's never heard of OS/2.
So MS are giving seminars to companies on why they should upgrade to
Windows 95. Why the hell isn't IBM offering companies free seminars on
OS/2, and what it will mean for companies to upgrade to it?
I really love OS/2, but I don't want to be always waiting for OS/2
software to catch up with Win95. Even if Warp is superior, what's the
use in that if all the good software is available on Win95?
What about games? What ever happened to Doom/2? by the time that is
released, Doom will be old hat. It seems not many people play it these
days anyway. Another case of OS/2 in continual catch-up.
I know OS/2 has a user base of 7million or so. But I wonder how many
of these people are just using it until Win95 is released?
Does anyone out there really believe the situation will get better?
Is it any better in the US?
Jamie (feeling depressed over yet another story on Windows95 in the paper)
--
Jamie P. Curmi | Email: cu...@aaii.oz.au
The Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute | Phone: +61 3 663 7922
Level 6, 171 La Trobe Street, Melbourne, Vic, 3000 | Fax: +61 3 663 7937
** Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence **
Wayne J. Hyde
[zapped]
> I liked the interface (in fact, I've switched to the WPShell for Win
> as my Windows shell).
In the few minutes that I ran the WPS4Win, I couldn't get it to save
the settings when I changed the default minimize behavior. I tried to
make it minimize windows to icons on the desktop, and it kept putting
the setting back to the default... weird.
> What would have made me stick with it? A native set of business
> productivity apps, like WP Perfect Office (or Smart Suite from
> Lotus) that are as good as their Windows counterparts. Face it,
Until ISV's go to a common code base, it seems that OS/2 versions will
always lag the Windows versions. I think Lotus and Corel have gone to
common code for their next versions of some apps.
[zap]
> Here's Novell, hates MS, has a terrific suite of apps, including
> maybe the best wordprocessor on earth (provided you have the
> hardware to run it, and the box LIES about this). Why hasn't IBM
> signed a deal with them to have Perfect Office for OS/2? Why
> doesn't IBM take a few million from the Warp ad budget, and simply
> PAY Lotus and Novell to port their suites to OS/2? Can you imagine
Paying someone to do a port is guaranteed to get you a quick hack that
is bloated and buggy. See Borland C++ v1.0. WP6.0 for OS/2 was
reportedly almost complete when WordPerfect pulled the plug on it.
Why? Who knows. Probably because IBM started advertising AmiPro/2
and pissed WP off.
[zapped]
> You want OS/2 to be a viable competitor to Windows? Call Gerstner,
> tell him to get his butt out to Orem, and cut a deal. It's probably
> too late now, however, and you are right to worry about the future
> of OS/2. If it makes it, it will be only because of the inevitable
> transition to RISC. And so far, IBM has blown it there, too.
Agreed. IBM screwed up OS/2 PPC pretty badly. Classic IBM.
> Great OS. Stupid management. No wonder the company lost the equivalent
> of several countries' GNPs.
IMHO, OS/2 was a great OS of the past. From versions 2.0 to 2.11, the
evolution of OS/2 was nothing more than bug-fixes and some code
optimization. Pretty sad. Even OS/2 3.0 is just more bug fixes and
optimization with a 'light' TCPIP stack thrown in. Warp should be
OS/2 v2.2.
OS/2's future is pretty dark.
--
Wayne Hyde | Network Manager | w...@cis.ufl.edu
3461-267 SW 2nd Ave | Fla Cooperative Fish & | http://www.cis.ufl.edu/~wjh
Gainesville, FL 32607 | Wildlife Research Unit | I speak for me, nobody else
(904) 372-3602 | (904) 392-1861 | <This space for rent>
cs...@nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu
>
>I'm interested in knowing if anyone really believes OS/2 has a chance
>against Win95. I have been an OS/2 advocate for a number of years now,
>and I use OS/2 Warp at home. But I guess all the Win95 hype is getting
>to me.
snip
>Jamie (feeling depressed over yet another story on Windows95 in the paper)
>
>--
> Jamie P. Curmi | Email: cu...@aaii.oz.au
> The Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute | Phone: +61 3 663 7922
> Level 6, 171 La Trobe Street, Melbourne, Vic, 3000 | Fax: +61 3 663 7937
> ** Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence **
I would be surprised if OS/2 ever reaches the level of market share that windows
enjoys in the U.S. However, OS/2 is very popular in the corporate world and in
Europe (40% and more of the market - i read). There is plenty of room in the
world for windows, win95, OS/2, linux, macintosh, etc. If the number of OS
choices were reduced we would all be losers. Remember how crappy American
cars were when detroit wasn't feeling any heat? Don't worry - competition is
good for the industry and IBM is commited to OS/2. If only 10% of the home
PCs end up running it I would consider it a smashing success.
Christopher Sakezles
cs...@nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu
University of Florida
Materials Science
Get Warped with OS/2 v3.0 . . .
or bend over for Mr. Bill
Michael Hermann
|>
|> I'm interested in knowing if anyone really believes OS/2 has a chance
|> against Win95. I have been an OS/2 advocate for a number of years now,
|> and I use OS/2 Warp at home. But I guess all the Win95 hype is getting
|> to me.
Well, I believe it has a chance, it won't replace Windows but it IMO
will become a large enough market to sustain and attract programmers.
Something like 1/3 of the PC market I guess
|> I know I'll get flamed for this, but I think most of us know OS/2 will
|> be superior technology to Win95 (nowhere near as many kludges), and is
|> bound to be more stable (not being a 1.0 product, and not being a MS
|> product ;-). But will this mean anything to the average user?
remains to be seen
|> If MS can market something with pure hype to the extent they have,
|> imagine what they'll do when the product is selling. It is really
|> depressing.
The fact that they could produce the hype is that it is NOT selling, once
it is released they have to live up to their claims, so far they don't
have to
|> Here are some more examples of OS/2 lack of visibility here:
|>
|> + OS/2 Applications in software stores is just about non-existant.
|> Some haven't even heard of OS/2. Ask them about Windows95 and....
|>
|> + A few weeks back I was out to dinner with some friends. One guy
|> started to ask me about the internet, and how could he get on to it.
|> Another guy said, "wait for Windows 95, it'll have all you need".
|> I quickly said, "Why wait...OS/2 Warp will get you on now". Everyone
|> asked "what's that?". No one had even heard of it.
|>
|> + Another example. My wife works for a big Japanese company in Australia.
|> She was discussing windows with one of the Computer people there. He
|> was very excitied to tell her that he had just been to a seminar by MS
|> on Windows95, and that they would be getting it as soon as it was
|> released. He's never heard of OS/2.
|>
|> So MS are giving seminars to companies on why they should upgrade to
|> Windows 95. Why the hell isn't IBM offering companies free seminars on
|> OS/2, and what it will mean for companies to upgrade to it?
beats me, looks like IBM still shoots itself in the foot. They have
a great product but are unable to sell it
OTOH over here (Germany/Europe) things are different. The mags have
OS/2 on the covers and good reviews about it, even some special
issue just for OS/2 (same goes for the Win95 beta) so at least it
isn't unheard of.
It comes bundled on ~40% of all PCs. Big companies are switching to
it Mercedes, Deutsche Bank (germany's largest financial institute),
Lufthansa (german airline), those companies will install > 1M copies
within the next year. So visibility isn't much of an issue. I guess
things will pick up in the rest of the world too.
-Mike
R Wilkens
>What would have made me stick with it? A native set of business productivity
>apps, like WP Perfect Office (or Smart Suite from Lotus) that are as good as
As an aside, Lotus *does* have a smartsuite out. And starting with the
next version, it will have the same functionality of all windows and
Win95 versions.
--
Rob Wilkens
Windows: Because patience is a virtue.
Joseph Coughlan
>
>I'm interested in knowing if anyone really believes OS/2 has a chance
>against Win95. I have been an OS/2 advocate for a number of years now,
>and I use OS/2 Warp at home. But I guess all the Win95 hype is getting
>to me.
The Hype will increase until WIN95 ships. From then on it's all down
hill.
It will belike NT all over again. NT's height of fame was July 1993.
It shipped in August 1993.
Anyway, by the time WIN95 ships OS/2 will have enough mass to
co-exist. Then it will be a technology war since both are equally
priced and both have their loyal camps.
OS/2's next release will be late 1995/early 1996.
--
"It's like NT all over again." - Former NY Met baseball coach.
Dr. Joseph Coughlan, jcou...@gaia.arc.nasa.gov.
John Colombo
>Subject: Does OS/2 really stand a chance?
>Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 22:19:13 GMT
[Much angst about survival of 0S/2 deleted]
My thoughts.
I tried Warp on my home system (386/40, 8mb). Install was a cinch; but I
thoroughly read the docs and had to edit the standard config.sys to get it to
recognize my Sony CD Rom attached to a SB16 MCD card. But the docs laid it
all out, no problem. No horror stories; pleasant experience.
I liked the interface (in fact, I've switched to the WPShell for Win as my
Windows shell). BUT, Warp was simply too slow for my taste on my system in
running my critical apps (WPWIN 6.1). And the Internet stuff is partly slick,
mostly good, and partly a disaster (Ultimail has to be the worst program I've
ever run for Internet mail). And ultimately, using OS/2 to just run Windows
apps is dumb -- they just don't take advantage of what the os has to offer.
So, I returned it.
What would have made me stick with it? A native set of business productivity
apps, like WP Perfect Office (or Smart Suite from Lotus) that are as good as
their Windows counterparts. Face it, OS/2 simply doesn't have 'em. I said in
an earlier message posted here that IBM management must be brain dead. Why is
it that no one at IBM seems to understand that apps sell os's? When you think
about it, the whole PC industry resulted from a single application, Lotus 123,
that *everyone* in business had to have. Trying to sell an os on its merits
alone is futile; people (at least, consumers) don't really use os's, they use
the apps that run under the os's. Would people switch to OS/2 if they had
familiar apps that didn't have to run under the kludge of win/os2? Much, much
more likely than the situation is now.
Here's Novell, hates MS, has a terrific suite of apps, including maybe the
best wordprocessor on earth (provided you have the hardware to run it, and the
box LIES about this). Why hasn't IBM signed a deal with them to have Perfect
Office for OS/2? Why doesn't IBM take a few million from the Warp ad budget,
and simply PAY Lotus and Novell to port their suites to OS/2? Can you imagine
where OS/2 would be today (with WinEver still in the twighlight zone) if IBM
could offer OS/2 bundled with, say, a native Perfect Office or Smart Suite?
How many business users could IBM get with an ad campaign along the lines of
"Stay with MS Word in Windoze, or Warp to WordPerfect where you can REALLY
name your files . . ."
You want OS/2 to be a viable competitor to Windows? Call Gerstner, tell him
to get his butt out to Orem, and cut a deal. It's probably too late now,
however, and you are right to worry about the future of OS/2. If it makes it,
it will be only because of the inevitable transition to RISC. And so far, IBM
has blown it there, too.
Great OS. Stupid management. No wonder the company lost the equivalent
of several countries' GNPs.
John Colombo
jcol...@law.uiuc.edu
Danny Armstrong
Michael Hermann <her...@spock.uni-passau.de> wrote:
>In article <curmi.795305953@frankland-river>, cu...@aaii.oz.au (Jamie Curmi) writes:
>|>
>|> I'm interested in knowing if anyone really believes OS/2 has a chance
>|> against Win95. I have been an OS/2 advocate for a number of years now,
>|> and I use OS/2 Warp at home. But I guess all the Win95 hype is getting
>|> to me.
>
>Well, I believe it has a chance, it won't replace Windows but it IMO
>will become a large enough market to sustain and attract programmers.
>Something like 1/3 of the PC market I guess
OS/2 has a lot of attractive developing stuff behind it. It's my guess
that the new market is now large enough to sustain a good amount of
growth. I think we'll be seeing a lot more hardware support and new apps
in the next 6-12 months.
>|> I know I'll get flamed for this, but I think most of us know OS/2 will
>|> be superior technology to Win95 (nowhere near as many kludges), and is
>|> bound to be more stable (not being a 1.0 product, and not being a MS
>|> product ;-). But will this mean anything to the average user?
>
>remains to be seen
I think it means a lot more to people that have been using machines for a
while. There are many of these kinds of people that like to DO computing-
they like to get things done. OS/2 is probably not going to get really
wide spread, but I don't think that this is a real issue. Microsoft just
has so much momentum behind them that people are just waiting for a
*normal* upgrade. I really wouldn't worry about everyone using Warp. The
face of personal computing is going to undergo some very dramatic changes
in the next few years- and OS/2 is just a small part of it. It really
centers around a bunch of open, layered OO technologies being pushed by a
bunch of industry leaders. The main push is the tremendous cost savings
for development, the opening up of much more competition, and the
incredible benefits for the end-user of MASSIVE integration. Microsoft
will probably be forced to conform to this movement somewhat, especially
because everything is going to also work with MS os's.
>|> If MS can market something with pure hype to the extent they have,
>|> imagine what they'll do when the product is selling. It is really
>|> depressing.
>
>The fact that they could produce the hype is that it is NOT selling, once
>it is released they have to live up to their claims, so far they don't
>have to
>
>|> Here are some more examples of OS/2 lack of visibility here:
>|>
>|> + OS/2 Applications in software stores is just about non-existant.
>|> Some haven't even heard of OS/2. Ask them about Windows95 and....
>|>
>|> + A few weeks back I was out to dinner with some friends. One guy
>|> started to ask me about the internet, and how could he get on to it.
>|> Another guy said, "wait for Windows 95, it'll have all you need".
>|> I quickly said, "Why wait...OS/2 Warp will get you on now". Everyone
>|> asked "what's that?". No one had even heard of it.
>|>
>|> + Another example. My wife works for a big Japanese company in Australia.
>|> She was discussing windows with one of the Computer people there. He
>|> was very excitied to tell her that he had just been to a seminar by MS
>|> on Windows95, and that they would be getting it as soon as it was
>|> released. He's never heard of OS/2.
>|>
>|> So MS are giving seminars to companies on why they should upgrade to
>|> Windows 95. Why the hell isn't IBM offering companies free seminars on
>|> OS/2, and what it will mean for companies to upgrade to it?
>
>beats me, looks like IBM still shoots itself in the foot. They have
>a great product but are unable to sell it
They are selling it. They have plenty of problems dealing with
compatibility, availiablity of software- I mean that nearly every
computer store has got the general stuff (WP, SS, DB, games). Don't be
too surprised to see this scene gradually change somewhat over the next
year. Software vendors have to see an advantage to carrying OS/2
software. It seems like so many people expect things to just change
automatically overnight. MS is going to be a major player for a while-
even with inferior stuff. It's going to take a while to break into that
market of preloaded OSs and people who basically need everything spelled
out for them. Expect to still see a lot of support people configuring
Win9x systems for end-users. This is in no way a putdown to people who
are inept at using computers. So many people are being forced to adapt to
this new cultural thing, and they just don't have the time to deal with
all of the issues. MS is just leading them by the hand, telling them that
they really don't have to make any decisions, that their future is safe
with them. The MS seminars that I saw are basically catering to people
that are worried about what the future holds. "Windows now has a totally
new look. You won't get lost...it's so easy to find this and that..." IBM
is saying, "you can do all of this stuff right now. Just look at all of
this shit going on. I can run just about anything." People afraid of
computers are going to be scared by IBM. People curious about computers
will probably be drawn to IBM.
Somewhat end-post disclaimer:
These are just really general statements. Please don't read too much into
them.
>OTOH over here (Germany/Europe) things are different. The mags have
>OS/2 on the covers and good reviews about it, even some special
>issue just for OS/2 (same goes for the Win95 beta) so at least it
>isn't unheard of.
>It comes bundled on ~40% of all PCs. Big companies are switching to
>it Mercedes, Deutsche Bank (germany's largest financial institute),
>Lufthansa (german airline), those companies will install > 1M copies
>within the next year. So visibility isn't much of an issue. I guess
>things will pick up in the rest of the world too.
I'm looking at the future. There is NOTHING out there today that provides
us with anything like what we should be using in about 3-4 years. I don't
see MS leading us into the future. From what I've heard, they are not
fully supporting open systems (with source), and OLE does not offer the
simplicity and flexibility needed in the developer world. I don't see MS
leading new technology that will radically alter how we do things- no
more huge applications.
It is, and will be a really exciting time in the software industry.
Danny Armstrong
<cs...@nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu> wrote:
>In <curmi.795305953@frankland-river>, cu...@aaii.oz.au (Jamie Curmi) writes:
>>
>>I'm interested in knowing if anyone really believes OS/2 has a chance
>>against Win95. I have been an OS/2 advocate for a number of years now,
>>and I use OS/2 Warp at home. But I guess all the Win95 hype is getting
>>to me.
>
>snip
>
>>Jamie (feeling depressed over yet another story on Windows95 in the paper)
>>
>>--
>> Jamie P. Curmi | Email: cu...@aaii.oz.au
>> The Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute | Phone: +61 3 663 7922
>> Level 6, 171 La Trobe Street, Melbourne, Vic, 3000 | Fax: +61 3 663 7937
>> ** Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence **
>
>I would be surprised if OS/2 ever reaches the level of market share that windows
>enjoys in the U.S. However, OS/2 is very popular in the corporate world and in
>Europe (40% and more of the market - i read). There is plenty of room in the
>world for windows, win95, OS/2, linux, macintosh, etc. If the number of OS
>choices were reduced we would all be losers. Remember how crappy American
>cars were when detroit wasn't feeling any heat? Don't worry - competition is
>good for the industry and IBM is commited to OS/2. If only 10% of the home
>PCs end up running it I would consider it a smashing success.
That would be absolutely amazing. That sounds possible- especially by
next Jan.
Tim Williams
one OS. The top is going to get smaller and smaller for M$. Power PC's
aren't going anywhere, and M$ won't likely be their primary OS for some
time to come. The machine that intel/hp are making to replace x86 will
probably not be designed exclusively for WIn, but for Unnix, NT and other
"HIGH END" platforms. OS/2 will be around. I gaurantee ya!(assuming they
do the smart thing and ad those network capabilities to the base pkg)
Tim
bog...@ibm.net
>Tim
Good post, just one point I strongly disagree with. PPC will go very far and
will do so because it offers superior performance/price compared to Intel. The
604 will be on the mass market sometime this summer/fall and will be as fast
as the P6 which won't ship in quantity till 1996. Look at all the interest the
PPC on Mac created and then think how much more will be generated when IBM
and Motorola gear up.
//
// Rolf Boganes
// Victoria, BC
// Canada
// MS yesterdays technology tomorrow
//
Victor Healey
off of other systems I helped install WARP on. Win 95 even in the Beta
version is far nicer and much faster.
This is one slick product.
I can use it just as it stands even if they never release a finsished
version!
Vic
Victor Healey
Anyway, by the time WIN95 ships OS/2 will have enough mass to
co-exist. Then it will be a technology war since both are equally
priced and both have their loyal camps.
OS/2's next release will be late 1995/early 1996.
--
"It's like NT all over again." - Former NY Met baseball coach.
Dr. Joseph Coughlan, jcou...@gaia.arc.nasa.gov.
Doc when you consider the folks that think it thru and figure it isn't
worth keeping an incompatible os on the pc just to run a few apps then
you will see how the WARP market will shrink rapidly as folks free up
disk space. WIN 95 appears to run apps more smothly and the dos apps are
run in nicer windows then os/2 currently does. Programs that didn't run
right or at all in OS/2 seem to run ok in Win 95's OS. You can also do all
the neat things like formating several disks while downloading via the
phone with this new product. The feel is that the graphics are faster in
Win 95 and many little icons that appear when certain taks are being run
are animated. I really like the one of the hand writing in a book as
data is located in a global search of the hard disks.
Soundblaster/WaveBlaster seem to function better with Win/95 instead of
one app grabing it and that is all you get as in os/2 warp.
Just about all the neat things that come with WARP are in my Win 95 setup
and a bunch more that costs big bucks to add to OS/2 from IBM.
The hooks to networking is one of these that should make this gui
interface a big seller in the school sytems of many countries IMHO.
If I was thinking of purchasing OS/2 I would do much better to wait or
grab a copy of Win 95 beta. It is much bettrer then the beta versions of
OS/2 that I played with for the last two years.
The final release deserves all the attention folks are giving it.
Vic Healey
Marietta Ga USA.
Brian Sturgill
: Anyway, by the time WIN95 ships OS/2 will have enough mass to
: co-exist. Then it will be a technology war since both are equally
: priced and both have their loyal camps.
...
: Dr. Joseph Coughlan, jcou...@gaia.arc.nasa.gov.
From a mass market standpoint I have to disagree. From Thoman's
letter we know that OS/2's installed base was approximately 7
million... AFTER the 1 million Warp sales touted here so often.
For sake of argument let's say that OS/2 has an installed base
of 8 million (though this is definitely an upper bound).
The number of real users is likely only 4 million (+/- 1 million).
Windows 95 will indeed ship this year (I'm betting Sept.), but for
sake of argument, let's say it ships in December.
We know Warp sales have slowed as IBM isn't bragging about 2 million
yet. We also know that a fair number of Warp's sales are upgrades
and tire-kickers so that IBM's current estimate is likely too large
and will remain so as IBM cleverly failed to offer upgrades
to Warp, so they can't "know" that it is not a new user. Thus we will
have to do our own estimates of Warp's growth potential.
As Warp sales have slowed quickly, I think it is fair to say that a
majority of sales were actually upgrades for Warp for Windows. IBM
had a number of promotions and there was a lot of publicity, plus
the price was cheap, so a fair portion were tire-kickers and as
there were install problems, etc I think it fair to say a large
number didn't stick. Thus I think a _maximum_ growth rate for
Warp for Windows (in terms of added new users) is 250,000 a month.
(They did 1,000,000 in 2 months divide by 2 because of upgrades, divide
by 2 again because of the tire-kickers.)
While sales of full-pack will be large at first (upgraders), it is
unlikely to sell to new users as they already have copies of Windows,
so it is probably irrelevant. Warp LAN Client (again making
the rosy assumption that people will like what they see) may add
to sales, but probably not until June.
So we have:
March, April, May = 3*250,000 = 750,000
June - December = 7*300,000 = 2,100,000
So _at_ best (and this is an inconceivably rosy scenario) OS/2
could have a base of real users number 7,000,000 by the end of the
year, and this assumes Windows 95 slips to the end of the year.
A more realistic scenario:
The Windows 95 wide beta release stalls OS/2 sales, a hastily released
Warp LAN Client is too buggy and hurts sales further. Windows 95
releases in September, and there are large defections from OS/2.
March, April = 2*200,000 = 400,000
May, June, July, August = 4*100,000 = 400,000
September-December = 4*100,000 = 400,000
but 2,000,000 OS/2 users defect to Windows 95.
This would make OS/2's number of real users 3,200,000 at the end of 95.
From an historical standpoint, my "more realistic" projection is not
unreasonable as OS/2 has only been growing at about 1.34 million real users
per year. Windows 95's release will definately have a negative
impact on OS/2 sales. And there will undoubtedly be defections.
The point here is that there are more Mac users than the 7,000,000
rosy projection for OS/2 and Apple is losing ISVs all the time.
If IBM can't get mainstream apps for OS/2, then it simply
can't become a mainstream OS.
Further, even OS/2 advocates admit that OS/2's user base is very
much "server/developer" oriented... if you don't have a mainstream
base, you can't get ISVs to develop mainstream apps.
Finally, where did you dream up the idea that OS decisions are
based on technology/cost?
Desktop OS decisions are based on app support, and Windows 95
has _already_ won this hands down. The products may not yet be
shipping, but there is no Windows vendor that hasn't at least laid
the groundwork. Server OS decisions are based on stability and it's
ability to be integrated with desktops... Windows NT is already the
fastest growing OS in that market, and do you believe that the remote
administration facilities and built in networking of Windows 95 will
do anything but accelerate this growth?
Oh, and I forgot the marketing factor... who do you think will
win that war?
Remember, just because I am purposely trying to make you feel "Fear,
Uncertainty, and Doubt", doesn't mean the emotions aren't appropriate
to the situation.
Brian
--
C. Brian Sturgill Internet: br...@ataman.com
President and Chief Technical Officer CompuServe: 70363,1373
Ataman Software, Inc. Telephone: (303) 416-9199
749 S. Lemay, Suite A3-411 FAX: (303) 416-9188
Ft. Collins, Colorado 80524 FTP Site: rmii.com:/pub2/ataman
rh...@rahul.net
Hey Vic!
Wind 9-something won't run all my OS/2 apps. I have NO windows apps
More apps are appearing every day for OS/2 Warp.
Many companies use OS/2 for mission critical Client Server applications.
The majority of Bamk ATM's use OS/2.
A lot of Banks themselves use OS/2.
Winever is a Hack nd a kludge but that is all most people expect these
days thanks to MicroShaft.
IBM and MILLIONS of customers are behind OS/2.
There just aren't as many Mindless sheep using it as is the case
with Windows.
Think for a minute...
People actually go into a store and BUY OS/2 Warp.
Compare that to the "Oh it came on my computer, it MUST be the best"
Windows preload crowd.
I have seen the latest beta of Windows 95.
I crashed it three times in the first 30 miutes doing SIMPLE things.
Locked up solid when I tried to play three .avi files at once.
Roy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roy E. Hill | Using OS/2 Warp and IAK
rh...@rahul.net | Learning Linux...
Santa Clara, CA | This PC is 100% Microsoft free
------------------------------------------------------------------------
William de Haan
cu...@aaii.oz.au (Jamie Curmi) wrote:
>I'm interested in knowing if anyone really believes OS/2 has a chance
>against Win95. I have been an OS/2 advocate for a number of years now,
>and I use OS/2 Warp at home. But I guess all the Win95 hype is getting
>to me.
Ah, another convert. Welcome to the club. ;-)
>Before all the flames come in from either side, I am no MS-lemming.
>But I guess I am an IBM-lemming, in that I think OS/2 is fantastic.
>But that doesn't mean I am not worried about it's future.
The OS/2 architecture is terrific. The implementation, marketing, and
general aimlessness of the strategy creates real concerns.
>I know I'll get flamed for this, but I think most of us know OS/2 will
>be superior technology to Win95 (nowhere near as many kludges), and is
>bound to be more stable (not being a 1.0 product, and not being a MS
>product ;-). But will this mean anything to the average user?
Not in the slightest. The average user doesn't buy operating systems, he
buys applications. IBM started selling OS/2 as an application and bombed
in the home market. By repositioning it as a Windows add-on (OS/2 for
Windows), it made a much bigger dent in the public consciousness. With
Warp, they've been selling bonuspack, not the OS.
>It seems to me all MS has to do is produce an OS/2-Mac like interface
>but prettier, put their name on it, and it will sell. Win95 may be the
>kludge from hell, but will this be visible to your average user?
>All they'll see is a pretty interface. They don't care about the
>internals, as long as it will run the latest Word or Excel.
Win 3.0 was a monster hack, and it sold millions. Win 3.1 was a cleaned
up hack, and it sold TENS of millions. Win 4.0 is a much cleaned up
hack that runs faster and stabler than the Win 3.1 hack. All the end
user is going to see is that Win 4.0 is better than Win 3.1. And once
those "Win95 approved" stickers start showing up on applications on the
shelf, sticking with Win 3.1 will become more and more difficult.
>The hype really is too much. If you read the magazines and papers it
>appears OS/2 Warp doesn't even exist. Most people you mention it to
>say "What's OS/2?", but if you ask them if they have heard of
>"Windows 95" they all have.
Dunno where you're posting from, but here (Toronto), Warp has achieved
much better recognition. OS/2 hasn't (that is to say, the marketing
machine has put the name "Warp" in the public mind, but not "OS/2",
which still has the reputation as a loser OS). The Microsoft marketing
team has done a superb job getting their message out to the masses. So
good that they are currently trying to reign in expectations from
becoming impossibly high.
>If MS can market something with pure hype to the extent they have,
>imagine what they'll do when the product is selling. It is really
>depressing.
Well, they said the same thing with NT, remember?
>Some of the visibility problem of OS/2 has to be the fault of IBM.
>After all these years, their marketing is still as bad as ever.
>You just have to look at Warp advertising on Australian TV. When
>Warp was first release, we got the "It's a warped world" commercial -
>the one where you don't see the screen, just a bunch of people talking
>and looking amazed. Very lame! Just the american commercial, not
>even an attempt by IBM Australia to put some Australians behind
>monitors and look amazed. Not even a screen shot. Anyway, we saw
>these adds for a few weeks, and then...nothing. And still nothing.
>That was the total of IBM's TV campaign. We never saw the nuns
>commercial. Zilch!
Well, the nuns commercial played in Canada quite a bit (it must have,
because I saw it, and I don't watch a lot of tv). But apparently it
tapered off after time. I've seen *nothing* regarding the fullpack
release.
>What happened to this massive marketing budget IBM set aside for Warp?
The same thing that always happens - IBM brags that they're spending
sooo much money, they will HAVE to take the market, yet the average
consumer is wondering what's going on.
>+ OS/2 Applications in software stores is just about non-existant.
> Some haven't even heard of OS/2. Ask them about Windows95 and....
"It'll be here soon". Yeah, same here.
>+ A few weeks back I was out to dinner with some friends. One guy
> started to ask me about the internet, and how could he get on to it.
> Another guy said, "wait for Windows 95, it'll have all you need".
> I quickly said, "Why wait...OS/2 Warp will get you on now". Everyone
> asked "what's that?". No one had even heard of it.
Most here have heard of it.
>+ Another example. My wife works for a big Japanese company in
> Australia.
> She was discussing windows with one of the Computer people there. He
> was very excitied to tell her that he had just been to a seminar by
> MS on Windows95, and that they would be getting it as soon as it was
> released. He's never heard of OS/2.
Like I said, the MS marketing team knows their job.
>So MS are giving seminars to companies on why they should upgrade to
>Windows 95. Why the hell isn't IBM offering companies free seminars on
>OS/2, and what it will mean for companies to upgrade to it?
We have a couple of seminars available here, but they are something like
$600 apiece, which turns people off. IBMers used to go to computer
stores in December to market it on their days off, but that seems to
have died down. For anything else... "talk to your authorized IBM
service representative".
>I really love OS/2, but I don't want to be always waiting for OS/2
>software to catch up with Win95. Even if Warp is superior, what's the
>use in that if all the good software is available on Win95?
I'm seeing this already. I played with OS/2 v1.2 to v2.11, because it
beat Windows. But with the Win95 beta I'm running, most of the
OS/2 advantages have been overcome. And I see major Win95 support
appearing over the next 6-12 months.
>What about games? What ever happened to Doom/2? by the time that is
>released, Doom will be old hat. It seems not many people play it these
>days anyway. Another case of OS/2 in continual catch-up.
I was told Doom/2 was supposed to be available with Warp when it came
out. I've never seen it though.
>I know OS/2 has a user base of 7million or so. But I wonder how many
>of these people are just using it until Win95 is released?
Several people have said explicitly that they are using OS/2 as a
stopgap. I know one stores that *positions* Warp that way to it's
customers.
>Does anyone out there really believe the situation will get better?
>Is it any better in the US?
Can't say about the US, but the above is the Canadian situation (or at
least my take on it). Us colonials gotta stick together... ;-)
+----------------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
|Deus Ex Machina | Internet: bde...@interlog.com |
|Software Consulting and Gator Pit | AGGHHhhh, 4 AM Already! |
+----------------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
Tom Krotchko
>Anyway, by the time WIN95 ships OS/2 will have enough mass to
>co-exist.
Presumably with DR-DOS.
>Then it will be a technology war
True. MS and Novell seem to be pretty much having the market to
themselves.
>OS/2's next release will be late 1995/early 1996.
Can we quote you on this?
--
Tom Krotchko
<to...@access.digex.net>
Lon Culbertson
: Not a chance in my book. I am taking it off not only my system but also
Well, if you actually attempt to follow through with this ill-advised
plan, at least we can look forward to the absence of posts from you in the
future.
Christopher Robato
: Not a chance in my book. I am taking it off not only my system but also
: Vic
If I am your boss, (which fortunately for you I'm not) and you install a
*beta* on PCs doing important, if not critical work, for my company, you're
getting the pink slip.
Even if you don't like Warp (which to my opinion is very stable and
robust), I won't mind if you leave the machines as Win 3.1 or WFW or DOS
6.2, or install NT or Unixware or SCO or whatever, but if you dare put a
beta over a commercial release in company machines, to risk a company's
operations because of your trendy OS preference, you're OUTTAHERE!
Christopher Robato
[snip on the bullshit mathematics]
: A more realistic scenario:
: The Windows 95 wide beta release stalls OS/2 sales, a hastily released
: Warp LAN Client is too buggy and hurts sales further. Windows 95
: releases in September, and there are large defections from OS/2.
They said the samething about NT and OS/2 in '93. What happened?
[snip on more bullshit mathematics]
: The point here is that there are more Mac users than the 7,000,000
: rosy projection for OS/2 and Apple is losing ISVs all the time.
Apple is not losing ISVs, just that the same ISVs are now developing for
Windows too, but they still do---and remain firmly committed to the Mac
base.
In fact, Apple has gained ISVs from the PC side as well; Stacker, Delrina,
Corel among them. Even ATI will soon make cards for the PCI PowerMacs
debuting this May.
ISVs can support multiple platforms---in fact there is an increasing
trend for them to do so. Porting activity has certainly risen in these
few years. ISVs can support Windows, Mac, OS/2 and Unix platforms with
crossports, unless Microsoft would deliberately put the squeeze on the
ISVs to abandon the other platforms, such as OS/2 for political purposes.
: If IBM can't get mainstream apps for OS/2, then it simply : can't
become a mainstream OS.
But there are mainstream apps, not as many as Windows, but there are
quite a few. Except for Smartsuite, many of these don't have brand name
recognition, but they are still quite excellent. I don't equate big
name=quality. You can have big name products that suck. Fax works and
HyperAccess isn't well known, but so far for me, they have matched and
beaten some of their equivalent Windows counterparts.
: Further, even OS/2 advocates admit that OS/2's user base is very : much
"server/developer" oriented... if you don't have a mainstream : base, you
can't get ISVs to develop mainstream apps.
What do you define as a 'mainstream base'?
There were quite a number of Mac apps when Macs hit the 2-3 million
number years ago. There are already quite a number of Unix mainstream
apps for far less than that number. The list of Amiga apps are still
quite impressive, even though that machine is a dead end, and the peak of
its user base was about 3-4 million.
And what is wrong with being 'server/developer' oriented, or the fact
that an OS can find a niche. Niches give a system an edge and a chance
for survival. The more niches OS/2 can find, the better for it. This is
a lesson in marketing, and it is true of any product on Earth.
OS/2 may not have Microsoft's marketing and momentum juggernaut, but with
niches, it can fight an effective guerilla war and stay alive.
: Finally, where did you dream up the idea that OS decisions are : based
on technology/cost?
: Desktop OS decisions are based on app support, and Windows 95
: has _already_ won this hands down. The products may not yet be
: shipping, but there is no Windows vendor that hasn't at least laid
: the groundwork. Server OS decisions are based on stability and it's
: ability to be integrated with desktops... Windows NT is already the
: fastest growing OS in that market, and do you believe that the remote
I know that NT is growing, but OS/2 certainly far outsold that number.
And Linux is definitely adding its user base as well.
: administration facilities and built in networking of Windows 95 will
: do anything but accelerate this growth?
: Oh, and I forgot the marketing factor... who do you think will
: win that war?
Oh you mean the war isn't decided yet? I don't even think of this as a
war, since Microsoft has already long conquered and ruled by default. Every
upgrade of DOS and Windows is more like a succession of the throne. Even
Windows 95.
No, Microsoft already had everything---therefore nothing to gain anymore
but everything to lose.
No, I see this more as a revolt; a guerilla movement that gets stronger
and stronger and ultimately unseats the tyrant. Look around you; the
anti MS movement isn't just in the OS/2 world, but also with Mac users,
Linux and Unix users as well (sorry to include them in the argument, but
you can sense the increasing anti-MS hostility in being expressed in their
groups and in their publications.)
A lot of Windows users aren't loyal either, since that was where a lot of
the OS/2 revolutionaries sprang from.
Take a look at March 25 issue of Fortune, and see who is now ganging up
against MS. This is a portent of things to come, and ultimately it could
be a handwriting on the wall.
If this sounds like a jihad, hell that's how I feel and I'm certainly not
alone. Computing should not be like this, but seeing recent events and
activities involving MS certainly churns my gut.
: Remember, just because I am purposely trying to make you feel "Fear, :
:Uncertainty, and Doubt", doesn't mean the emotions aren't appropriate : to
:the situation.
Yeah, we should all cower in fear and kneel down to bath in the radiance
of your Majesty and beg for forgiveness and mercy.
Lim Thye Chean
: Not a chance in my book. I am taking it off not only my system but also
: version is far nicer and much faster.
This is something I have done and wholeheartedly agreed.
--
Lim Thye Chean: Lim is my surname. My name is Thye Chean.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Institute of Systems Science Windows 95 and Apple IIGS user
Software Engineer, Author of Galaxia Authoring Environment (OSF/Motif)
Benjamin Y. Lee
>Sorry, but your wrong... Apple has had a decreasing ISV base for
>the last two years. If you don't believe, just check out back
>issures of MacWeek... there have been numerous articles on
>the problem.
You're right about the mac losing ISV's. Not to mention the big
turnouts for the win32 for mac programers sessions at mac shows. I
don't give it great odds, but I'd say the ISV situation might turn
around for apple and their gamble with a common powerpc platform might
succeed.
>Unless you're doing incredibly bland applications (Computer Associates
>comes to mind)
HEY, what's wrong with cricket graph? I darn well wish the mac
version was available for os/2 since it is the easiest way I've seen
to do a linear regression plot. (actually I might be wrong about CA
having written cricket graph, but I think they did...)
>cross platform development is very hard. If it were
>easy, do you seriously believe that WordPerfect wouldn't be on OS/2
>with a native version?
>If a big company like that finds it hard... what hope is there for
>smaller places?
Maybe because the smaller companies can do it like describe did and
write from the start with cross platform in mind? WP had a lot of
legacy code tied to dos/windows whereas a "smaller place" wouldn't
necessarily.
>Most copies of OS/2 run a few dedicated server
>applications. The next biggest group of users do program development.
>Together this set of usage comprises > 80% of the OS/2 copies in use.
>Most users of computers don't do program development... were you
>unaware of this? OS/2 has a "hobbiest" group of users that comprise
>about 10% of usage. Thus OS/2 user's base includes < 10% of mainstream
>users.
Do you have documentation for those numbers or are they just your
opinion? Most os/2 installations that I see around here are end user
systems for people who aren't in program development.
>At the time the Mac hit 2-3 million, that represented much larger
>percentage of the total market. Further, Macs were mostly used
>by mainstream users (I don't have numbers, but I would not be surprised
>that >90% of the Mac in use at that point were in the hands of
>mainstream users.)
This implies that you have hard documentation for the above numbers
concerning os/2 use?
>I never said that OS/2 did have a strong niche. I (no longer) believe
>it will die.
Geez, took you long enough to realize it...
>There is however, no real chance of it becoming mainstream,
>so you'd best get used to not have quality mainstream apps available.
Hmmm, no real chance huh? So there is no real chance of win95
flopping? Or the transition from win95 to NT lite flopping? Or for the
powerpc to take off and for microsoft to get left behind because NT
doesn't have a useable shell leaving os/2 and mac os to battle it out
with win95 and intel left in the dust? Hmmm, I'd say those together
sum up to a real chance for os/2 becoming mainstream, but maybe I have
a different definition of "real chance."
>Yes, it will live on... who will notice?
Obviously you and everyone else who reads this group will. Or are we
nobody? 8-)
>Mac users have been anti-Microsoft from the beginning, yet MS applications
>have 80% of the Mac market. OS/2 doesn't even have that going for them
>(though they do at least have Lotus).
I'm not sure I follow. Mac users and os/2 users largely resent
microsoft. Ok I follow that. I don't see the link between being
anti-microsoft and the availability of MS apps for an operating
system. On the other hand, I do note that it is quite true that there
is a notable dearth of MS and other comparable apps for os/2.
>Don't let me discourage you from being a rebel... if you don't mind
>living with the apps that are available, enjoy! (But remember that
>you won't be able to run Win32 apps.)
Actually, you don't know that to be true at this point. Win95 isn't
out, and nothing is stopping IBM from allowing win95 to run under
os/2, especially not win95's architecture which is intentionally very
similar to win3.1x. Further, win32s apps run faster under os/2 than
under win3.1x (reference: current issue of Byte).
>This could just as easily be interpreted as a sign of Microsoft's strength.
>In truth, many of Microsoft's competitors aren't very competent.
>Some of them aren't doing very well and are striking out anyway
>they can. As yet, no one has proven Microsoft has done anything illegal.
That remains to be seen, but the MSPublisherHack api call they
added to windows to make MS Publisher work does sound a bit fishy
to me...
>I think you've been reading the c.o.o.a view of MS for too long.
>They're just this big company with an unusually large number of
>talented people and an attitude. They make good products. (I should
>know, I/Ataman own licenses for more than 30 different MS products.)
I'll grant you that. I know a few people who worked for them in
interships and they're nice people and good programmers. The problem I
see is who the heck is designing the architectures over there, the
programmers or the marketing people? At least with win95 it certainly
looks like a group other than the programmers is in charge, and
perhaps with NT it was too much the programmers writing their dream
operating system rather than recognizing the reality of resource
limitations.
I'll also note that they do write good products, but I don't think
their products, especially in the apps department, are so much better
than their competitors' products to result in the great disparity in
sales figures. I think marketing does have a great deal to do with it,
whether it be word of mouth, the guy next door says its great, or the
larger scale "where do you want to go today" stuff.
-Ben
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Team OS/2 ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
| "Don't marry a person you can live with, // "Imagination is more important |
| marry someone you can't live without." // than knowledge..." - Einstein |
'''''''''''''''''''' Bye BYe BYle BYLe BYLee BYLEe BYLEE '''''''''''''''''''
Michael Hermann
|> Dr. Joseph Coughlan (jcou...@gaia.arc.nasa.gov) wrote:
|>
|> : Anyway, by the time WIN95 ships OS/2 will have enough mass to
|> : co-exist. Then it will be a technology war since both are equally
|> : priced and both have their loyal camps.
|> ...
|> : Dr. Joseph Coughlan, jcou...@gaia.arc.nasa.gov.
|>
|> From a mass market standpoint I have to disagree. From Thoman's
|> letter we know that OS/2's installed base was approximately 7
|> million... AFTER the 1 million Warp sales touted here so often.
|> For sake of argument let's say that OS/2 has an installed base
|> of 8 million (though this is definitely an upper bound).
|>
|> The number of real users is likely only 4 million (+/- 1 million).
|> Windows 95 will indeed ship this year (I'm betting Sept.), but for
|> sake of argument, let's say it ships in December.
Brian, stop it, you are way off base. Any numbers you present here
(along with any prognoses about what is likely to happen) are simply
entirely wrong
|> As Warp sales have slowed quickly, I think it is fair to say that a
|> majority of sales were actually upgrades for Warp for Windows. IBM
|> had a number of promotions and there was a lot of publicity, plus
|> the price was cheap, so a fair portion were tire-kickers and as
|> there were install problems, etc I think it fair to say a large
|> number didn't stick. Thus I think a _maximum_ growth rate for
|> Warp for Windows (in terms of added new users) is 250,000 a month.
|> (They did 1,000,000 in 2 months divide by 2 because of upgrades, divide
|> by 2 again because of the tire-kickers.)
Projection of sales for 95 (latest PC Professional, german issue) :
OS/2 : 4.5 M
Win95 : 2.5 M (August release)
So much for your "OS/2 will not even reach 2M"-scenario
|> While sales of full-pack will be large at first (upgraders), it is
|> unlikely to sell to new users as they already have copies of Windows,
|> so it is probably irrelevant.
Not so.. it comes bundled on PCs en masse, no MS Windows needed any
longer (thus an overall better deal for the vendors)
|> Warp LAN Client (again making the rosy assumption that people will like
|> what they see) may add to sales, but probably not until June.
But all the time you expect people to like what they see of Win95
|> So we have:
|> March, April, May = 3*250,000 = 750,000
|> June - December = 7*300,000 = 2,100,000
|>
|> So _at_ best (and this is an inconceivably rosy scenario) OS/2
|> could have a base of real users number 7,000,000 by the end of the
|> year, and this assumes Windows 95 slips to the end of the year.
Completely off, as I said above OS/2 4.5M, Win95 (august release) 2.5M
if it slips numbers will look even worse for it
|> A more realistic scenario:
|> The Windows 95 wide beta release stalls OS/2 sales, a hastily released
|> Warp LAN Client is too buggy and hurts sales further. Windows 95
|> releases in September, and there are large defections from OS/2.
Yeah right, only in your dreams.. are REALLY realistic scenario looks more
like : Win95 debuts in october and gets the praise we come to expect for
MS prodcuts. Warp LAN is released in september and is solid and stable,
and is acknowledged as such (except from you and Fast Eddie).
No users defect from Warp as there is no incentive to do so, many
users who have been waiting for Win95, prefer Warp (as the better
overall system) and don't upgrade to Win95.
|> March, April = 2*200,000 = 400,000
|> May, June, July, August = 4*100,000 = 400,000
|> September-December = 4*100,000 = 400,000
|> but 2,000,000 OS/2 users defect to Windows 95.
I hope even you don't believe those numbers
|> From an historical standpoint, my "more realistic" projection is not
|> unreasonable as OS/2 has only been growing at about 1.34 million real users
|> per year. Windows 95's release will definately have a negative
|> impact on OS/2 sales. And there will undoubtedly be defections.
Defections, yes, probably some 10k, not 2M as you suggest.
Historically OS/2 had a growth rate of 1.33M users, but the times are
a changing, historically MS was doing just fine, but right now they
don't seem to get anything right... and this shows
OS/2 sales will grow once Win95 is released, as it cannot stand up to
all the MS hype (BS). That also is historical, once MS releases overhyped
OS/2 competitors they seem to just drop dead... given that this is
Win95 and not NT it will be semi-alive, not moving fast but not
entirely dead either
|> Desktop OS decisions are based on app support, and Windows 95
|> has _already_ won this hands down. The products may not yet be
|> shipping, but there is no Windows vendor that hasn't at least laid
|> the groundwork. Server OS decisions are based on stability and it's
|> ability to be integrated with desktops... Windows NT is already the
|> fastest growing OS in that market, and do you believe that the remote
|> administration facilities and built in networking of Windows 95 will
|> do anything but accelerate this growth?
Just as NT did a few years ago, with all those great apps just 3 months
after release (or were that 3 years ???)
|> Oh, and I forgot the marketing factor... who do you think will
|> win that war?
IBM will, as their goal is to establish OS/2 whereas MS wants to kill it
and that won't happen. For the OSes themselves, both will be around
with Win95 having the larger (but not that much) base
|> Remember, just because I am purposely trying to make you feel "Fear,
|> Uncertainty, and Doubt", doesn't mean the emotions aren't appropriate
|> to the situation.
Ha... why do you think MS is behaving as they are ? they have no
product, customers are tired of waiting and MS promises aren't any
better than what is already available. MS has much to lose and little
to gain right now
-Mike
bha...@us.oracle.com
>Dr. Joseph Coughlan (jcou...@gaia.arc.nasa.gov) wrote:
>
>: Anyway, by the time WIN95 ships OS/2 will have enough mass to
>: co-exist. Then it will be a technology war since both are equally
>: priced and both have their loyal camps.
>: Dr. Joseph Coughlan, jcou...@gaia.arc.nasa.gov.
>
>From a mass market standpoint I have to disagree. From Thoman's
>letter we know that OS/2's installed base was approximately 7
>million... AFTER the 1 million Warp sales touted here so often.
>For sake of argument let's say that OS/2 has an installed base
>of 8 million (though this is definitely an upper bound).
>We know Warp sales have slowed as IBM isn't bragging about 2 million
>yet. We also know that a fair number of Warp's sales are upgrades
>and tire-kickers so that IBM's current estimate is likely too large
>and will remain so as IBM cleverly failed to offer upgrades
>to Warp, so they can't "know" that it is not a new user. Thus we will
>have to do our own estimates of Warp's growth potential.
>
>As Warp sales have slowed quickly, I think it is fair to say that a
>majority of sales were actually upgrades for Warp for Windows. IBM
>had a number of promotions and there was a lot of publicity, plus
>the price was cheap, so a fair portion were tire-kickers and as
>there were install problems, etc I think it fair to say a large
>number didn't stick.
Brian, you state your belief that a fair number of Warp sales were for upgrades and
"tire-kickers." Could you please substantiate your reasoning behind as to why you
think these "install problems" took a number of "tire-kickers" with them?
>Thus I think a _maximum_ growth rate for
>Warp for Windows (in terms of added new users) is 250,000 a month.
>(They did 1,000,000 in 2 months divide by 2 because of upgrades, divide
>by 2 again because of the tire-kickers.)
>
>While sales of full-pack will be large at first (upgraders), it is
>unlikely to sell to new users as they already have copies of Windows,
>so it is probably irrelevant. Warp LAN Client (again making
>the rosy assumption that people will like what they see) may add
>to sales, but probably not until June.
>
>So we have:
> March, April, May = 3*250,000 = 750,000
> June - December = 7*300,000 = 2,100,000
>
>So _at_ best (and this is an inconceivably rosy scenario) OS/2
>could have a base of real users number 7,000,000 by the end of the
>year, and this assumes Windows 95 slips to the end of the year.
>
>A more realistic scenario:
>The Windows 95 wide beta release stalls OS/2 sales, a hastily released
>Warp LAN Client is too buggy and hurts sales further. Windows 95
>releases in September, and there are large defections from OS/2.
And what do you base this "realistic scenario" on? What makes you think the
Windows 95 beta release is going to stall OS/2 sales? Why do you think the
Warp Connect (LAN Client) will be hastily released and buggy? From what I
understand, Warp Connect has been slightly delayed. If IBM were really worried
about this Win95 beta, they probably would have released Warp Connect already.
And why do you think OS/2 users are going to defect to a kludgy OS? Your reasoning
defies rationale.
>
> March, April = 2*200,000 = 400,000
> May, June, July, August = 4*100,000 = 400,000
> September-December = 4*100,000 = 400,000
> but 2,000,000 OS/2 users defect to Windows 95.
>
>This would make OS/2's number of real users 3,200,000 at the end of 95.
Yea, right.
>
>From an historical standpoint, my "more realistic" projection is not
>unreasonable as OS/2 has only been growing at about 1.34 million real users
>per year. Windows 95's release will definately have a negative
>impact on OS/2 sales. And there will undoubtedly be defections.
I hate to say this. But I remember seeing you rant and rave the these same ideas
when NT was still in the wings.
>
>The point here is that there are more Mac users than the 7,000,000
>rosy projection for OS/2 and Apple is losing ISVs all the time.
>If IBM can't get mainstream apps for OS/2, then it simply
>can't become a mainstream OS.
>
>Further, even OS/2 advocates admit that OS/2's user base is very
>much "server/developer" oriented...
..this is changing...
[...]
>Desktop OS decisions are based on app support, and Windows 95
>has _already_ won this hands down. The products may not yet be
>shipping, but there is no Windows vendor that hasn't at least laid
>the groundwork.
Again, this smacks of your NT advocacy two years ago. I recall going to Comdex
back then and seeing developers touting their "NT" apps. Where are they all now?
[...]
>Brian
>--
>C. Brian Sturgill Internet: br...@ataman.com
>President and Chief Technical Officer CompuServe: 70363,1373
>Ataman Software, Inc. Telephone: (303) 416-9199
>749 S. Lemay, Suite A3-411 FAX: (303) 416-9188
>Ft. Collins, Colorado 80524 FTP Site: rmii.com:/pub2/ataman
Bryan
-----
Bryan K. Hayes
New Media Division
Oracle Corporation
Brian Sturgill
: Brian Sturgill (ata...@rmii.com) wrote:
...
: : The point here is that there are more Mac users than the 7,000,000
: : rosy projection for OS/2 and Apple is losing ISVs all the time.
: Apple is not losing ISVs, just that the same ISVs are now developing for
: Windows too, but they still do---and remain firmly committed to the Mac
: base.
Sorry, but your wrong... Apple has had a decreasing ISV base for
the last two years. If you don't believe, just check out back
issures of MacWeek... there have been numerous articles on
the problem.
...
: ISVs can support multiple platforms---in fact there is an increasing
: trend for them to do so. Porting activity has certainly risen in these
: few years. ISVs can support Windows, Mac, OS/2 and Unix platforms with
: crossports, unless Microsoft would deliberately put the squeeze on the
: ISVs to abandon the other platforms, such as OS/2 for political purposes.
Unless you're doing incredibly bland applications (Computer Associates
comes to mind), cross platform development is very hard. If it were
easy, do you seriously believe that WordPerfect wouldn't be on OS/2
with a native version?
If a big company like that finds it hard... what hope is there for
smaller places?
: : If IBM can't get mainstream apps for OS/2, then it simply : can't
: become a mainstream OS.
: But there are mainstream apps, not as many as Windows, but there are
: quite a few. Except for Smartsuite, many of these don't have brand name
: recognition, but they are still quite excellent. I don't equate big
: name=quality. You can have big name products that suck. Fax works and
: HyperAccess isn't well known, but so far for me, they have matched and
: beaten some of their equivalent Windows counterparts.
Well, if you're happy with what's there, then good for you... but
for others that might be reading this, I strongly recommend they
check out those apps you refer to before buying into OS/2... I think
they will find them less than satisfactory. IBM provides a list
of applications for OS/2 along with contact information... if you're
seriously considering OS/2, you should get this list and see what
sort of things are there. IBM posts the list to their OS/2 CompuServe
forum (I suspect it's on the Internet too, but I don't know where.)
: : Further, even OS/2 advocates admit that OS/2's user base is very : much
: "server/developer" oriented... if you don't have a mainstream : base, you
: can't get ISVs to develop mainstream apps.
: What do you define as a 'mainstream base'?
Most copies of OS/2 run a few dedicated server
applications. The next biggest group of users do program development.
Together this set of usage comprises > 80% of the OS/2 copies in use.
Most users of computers don't do program development... were you
unaware of this? OS/2 has a "hobbiest" group of users that comprise
about 10% of usage. Thus OS/2 user's base includes < 10% of mainstream
users.
: There were quite a number of Mac apps when Macs hit the 2-3 million
: number years ago. There are already quite a number of Unix mainstream
: apps for far less than that number. The list of Amiga apps are still
: quite impressive, even though that machine is a dead end, and the peak of
: its user base was about 3-4 million.
At the time the Mac hit 2-3 million, that represented much larger
percentage of the total market. Further, Macs were mostly used
by mainstream users (I don't have numbers, but I would not be surprised
that >90% of the Mac in use at that point were in the hands of
mainstream users.)
: And what is wrong with being 'server/developer' oriented, or the fact
: that an OS can find a niche. Niches give a system an edge and a chance
: for survival. The more niches OS/2 can find, the better for it. This is
: a lesson in marketing, and it is true of any product on Earth.
I never said that OS/2 did have a strong niche. I (no longer) believe
it will die. There is however, no real chance of it becoming mainstream,
so you'd best get used to not have quality mainstream apps available.
: OS/2 may not have Microsoft's marketing and momentum juggernaut, but with
: niches, it can fight an effective guerilla war and stay alive.
Yes, it will live on... who will notice?
...
: No, I see this more as a revolt; a guerilla movement that gets stronger
: and stronger and ultimately unseats the tyrant. Look around you; the
: anti MS movement isn't just in the OS/2 world, but also with Mac users,
: Linux and Unix users as well (sorry to include them in the argument, but
: you can sense the increasing anti-MS hostility in being expressed in their
: groups and in their publications.)
Mac users have been anti-Microsoft from the beginning, yet MS applications
have 80% of the Mac market. OS/2 doesn't even have that going for them
(though they do at least have Lotus).
: A lot of Windows users aren't loyal either, since that was where a lot of
: the OS/2 revolutionaries sprang from.
Don't let me discourage you from being a rebel... if you don't mind
living with the apps that are available, enjoy! (But remember that
you won't be able to run Win32 apps.)
: Take a look at March 25 issue of Fortune, and see who is now ganging up
: against MS. This is a portent of things to come, and ultimately it could
: be a handwriting on the wall.
This could just as easily be interpreted as a sign of Microsoft's strength.
In truth, many of Microsoft's competitors aren't very competent.
Some of them aren't doing very well and are striking out anyway
they can. As yet, no one has proven Microsoft has done anything illegal.
: If this sounds like a jihad, hell that's how I feel and I'm certainly not
: alone. Computing should not be like this, but seeing recent events and
: activities involving MS certainly churns my gut.
I think you've been reading the c.o.o.a view of MS for too long.
They're just this big company with an unusually large number of
talented people and an attitude. They make good products. (I should
know, I/Ataman own licenses for more than 30 different MS products.)
: : Remember, just because I am purposely trying to make you feel "Fear, :
: :Uncertainty, and Doubt", doesn't mean the emotions aren't appropriate : to
: :the situation.
: Yeah, we should all cower in fear and kneel down to bath in the radiance
: of your Majesty and beg for forgiveness and mercy.
Really, that's unnecessary, just send money (there are a few MS
products I don't have yet)! :-)
: Chris
: cro...@kuentos.guam.net
Joseph Coughlan
>In article <3ka0fh$k...@onramp.arc.nasa.gov>, jo...@eco.arc.nasa.gov says...
>
>>Anyway, by the time WIN95 ships OS/2 will have enough mass to
>>co-exist.
>
>Presumably with DR-DOS.
You mean PC DOS 7.0. DR-DOS and MS-DOS are dead.
>>Then it will be a technology war
>
>True. MS and Novell seem to be pretty much having the market to
>themselves.
Yep. LAN SERVER's as dead as IBM. UNIX is too. SUN and SGI are
building offices like mad in my home town but it's all a front.
>>OS/2's next release will be late 1995/early 1996.
>
>Can we quote you on this?
Yep. Mock me when it slips.
Joseph Coughlan
>
>Anyway, by the time WIN95 ships OS/2 will have enough mass to
>co-exist. Then it will be a technology war since both are equally
>priced and both have their loyal camps.
>
>OS/2's next release will be late 1995/early 1996.
>--
>
> "It's like NT all over again." - Former NY Met baseball coach.
>
>Dr. Joseph Coughlan, jcou...@gaia.arc.nasa.gov.
>
>Doc when you consider the folks that think it thru and figure it isn't
>worth keeping an incompatible os on the pc just to run a few apps then
>you will see how the WARP market will shrink rapidly as folks free up
>disk space. WIN 95 appears to run apps more smothly and the dos apps are
>run in nicer windows then os/2 currently does. Programs that didn't run
Unfortunately MS' NDA prevents a reporter from saying that WIN95 has
compatibility or perfromance problems.
>right or at all in OS/2 seem to run ok in Win 95's OS. You can also do all
>the neat things like formating several disks while downloading via the
>phone with this new product. The feel is that the graphics are faster in
^^^^^^^^^^
>Win 95 and many little icons that appear when certain taks are being run
>are animated. I really like the one of the hand writing in a book as
>data is located in a global search of the hard disks.
Wait until the BETA gets compared to OS/2 and then we'll see how that
feeling stands up.
>Soundblaster/WaveBlaster seem to function better with Win/95 instead of
^^^^^^^^^^
>one app grabing it and that is all you get as in os/2 warp.
Too bad that feel and seem are inappropiate terms that lack any
substance.
>Just about all the neat things that come with WARP are in my Win 95 setup
>and a bunch more that costs big bucks to add to OS/2 from IBM.
>The hooks to networking is one of these that should make this gui
>interface a big seller in the school sytems of many countries IMHO.
Like WARP Connect with it's long laundry list of conectivity software
that exceeds WIN95 ? You are comparing the MOBILE user edition of WARP
to WIN95. Try WARP Connect.
>If I was thinking of purchasing OS/2 I would do much better to wait or
>grab a copy of Win 95 beta. It is much bettrer then the beta versions of
>OS/2 that I played with for the last two years.
>
>The final release deserves all the attention folks are giving it.
>
>Vic Healey
>Marietta Ga USA.
Vic all you did was post fluff. No hard data and when you did mention
connectivity you referred to WARP the mobile editon and not the Connect
Edition. Too bad.
In April WIN95 sees light for the FIRST Time. No NDA to limit the free
discussion of ideas. If your post is any indication, WIN95 is doomed.
You avoid hard numbers.
Joseph Coughlan
>Dr. Joseph Coughlan (jcou...@gaia.arc.nasa.gov) wrote:
>
>: Anyway, by the time WIN95 ships OS/2 will have enough mass to
>: co-exist. Then it will be a technology war since both are equally
>: priced and both have their loyal camps.
>...
>: Dr. Joseph Coughlan, jcou...@gaia.arc.nasa.gov.
>
>From a mass market standpoint I have to disagree. From Thoman's
>letter we know that OS/2's installed base was approximately 7
>million... AFTER the 1 million Warp sales touted here so often.
>For sake of argument let's say that OS/2 has an installed base
>of 8 million (though this is definitely an upper bound).
8 is too high. 5 is more realisitic. 60% of all OSs sold in europe
today are OS/2. Remember Europe ?
>As Warp sales have slowed quickly, I think it is fair to say that a
>majority of sales were actually upgrades for Warp for Windows. IBM
Sorry but your guesses are refuted by ComputerWorld.
9% of ALL OS sales are WARP n the U Sand 60% in Europe. WARP's not
trailing off. How would sitting in Ft. Collins give you any idea about
anything about WARP sales ?
....
>Warp LAN Client is too buggy and hurts sales further. Windows 95
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Based on what dream ? No data what so ever. WARP full pack is even better
than WARP. You are wrong and have nothing excpet a dream that will
be proven wrong in May.
>From an historical standpoint, my "more realistic" projection is not
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Historically you've been the biggest failure I've ever seen on
advocacy. So bad were you that you left hoping to be forgotten.
>Finally, where did you dream up the idea that OS decisions are
>based on technology/cost?
From you. You used to make than argument until you realized WIN95 was
flawed and then you started saying it was a better BRANDNAME.
>Desktop OS decisions are based on app support, and Windows 95
>has _already_ won this hands down. The products may not yet be
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Wrongo Bongo. MS's WIN32 apps are win3.1 ports that run slower.
>Remember, just because I am purposely trying to make you feel "Fear,
>Uncertainty, and Doubt", doesn't mean the emotions aren't appropriate
>to the situation.
You have no effect except that of a fool who embarasses himself in
public for attention. Your reputation is mud.
When WIN95 ships WARP sales will surge. The lie will be exposed. WI95
is a better WfW but OS/2 is a better OS.
jim frost
>Unfortunately MS' NDA prevents a reporter from saying that WIN95 has
>compatibility or perfromance problems.
This might be a news flash, but the NDA was lifted months ago.
(Not that I think Win95 is all roses; I won't run it.)
jim frost
ji...@world.std.com
--
http://www.std.com/homepages/jimf
Tom Krotchko
>Unfortunately MS' NDA prevents a reporter from saying that WIN95 has
>compatibility or perfromance problems.
I had no idea you were a reporter that was under NDA. When the
NDA is lifted, you'll be sure to tell us about the compatibility
and/or performance problems you're alluding to, won't you?
In any event, the wide beta should be out within 4 weeks. We'll know
for sure then.
>Vic all you did was post fluff.
When you wrote this, were you trying to be ironic or sarcastic?
>In April WIN95 sees light for the FIRST Time.
Yep. Game over, man. Do you predict OS/2 sales will fall off immediately,
or will they hold up until the general release of Win95?
>WIN95 is doomed. You avoid hard numbers.
This form of humor is very subtle, but I'd say there must be a way
this sentence can be scrambled for its true meaning.
Lets see:
dr. moody shaw IOU 5. dead number 9 vision
That's deep. I had no idea you were a beatles fan.
"No really. I wasn't endorsing Windows"
-- IBM Executive Cannavino after a press conference in which he endorsed
Windows.
--
Tom Krotchko
<to...@access.digex.net>
Michael Hermann
|> In article <3klccd$k...@onramp.arc.nasa.gov>, jo...@eco.arc.nasa.gov says...
|>
|>
|> Yep. Game over, man. Do you predict OS/2 sales will fall off immediately,
|> or will they hold up until the general release of Win95?
I expect them to rise as all the vapor settles and reveals a miserable OS
-Mike
root
>When WIN95 ships WARP sales will surge. The lie will be exposed. WI95
>is a better WfW but OS/2 is a better OS.
>--
>
> "It's like NT all over again." - Former NY Met baseball coach.
>
>Dr. Joseph Coughlan, jcou...@gaia.arc.nasa.gov.
Wowowowowowow... Talk about living the dream...
- Rich
Robert Rodgers
jo...@eco.arc.nasa.gov (Joseph Coughlan) wrote:
>8 is too high. 5 is more realisitic. 60% of all OSs sold in europe
>today are OS/2. Remember Europe ?
"We're a bestseller in Europe!" - Commodore Amiga.
History tells us that if you're not a success in the United States or
Japan, you're nowhere, a bit player.
bog...@ibm.net
Japan is still nowhere as far as windows goes, it has not caught on there.
OS/2 will come preloaded on Toshiba and NEC in Japan and Europe.
jim frost
>Japan is still nowhere as far as windows goes, it has not caught on there.
>OS/2 will come preloaded on Toshiba and NEC in Japan and Europe.
Unfortunately (for OS/2, that is) NT has considerably better support
for Japanese and most other non-Western languages than does OS/2 as a
result of its use of UNICODE. That puts OS/2 at an incredible
disadvantage in such countries.
Robert L Maynard
>bog...@ibm.net writes:
>>Japan is still nowhere as far as windows goes, it has not caught on there.
>>OS/2 will come preloaded on Toshiba and NEC in Japan and Europe.
>
>Unfortunately (for OS/2, that is) NT has considerably better support
>for Japanese and most other non-Western languages than does OS/2 as a
>result of its use of UNICODE. That puts OS/2 at an incredible
>disadvantage in such countries.
>
Oriental versions of OS/2 have Double Byte Character Set ( DBCS ) support.
There is more than "One Microsoft Way" to support non-European
languages.
Bob
Robert Stephen Rodgers
>In <J1v2LO9R...@eng.umd.edu>, rsro...@eng.umd.edu (Robert Rodgers) writes:
>>In article <3kld67$k...@onramp.arc.nasa.gov>,
>>jo...@eco.arc.nasa.gov (Joseph Coughlan) wrote:
>>>8 is too high. 5 is more realisitic. 60% of all OSs sold in europe
>>>today are OS/2. Remember Europe ?
>
>>"We're a bestseller in Europe!" - Commodore Amiga.
>
>>History tells us that if you're not a success in the United States or
>>Japan, you're nowhere, a bit player.
>
>Japan is still nowhere as far as windows goes, it has not caught on there.
>OS/2 will come preloaded on Toshiba and NEC in Japan and Europe.
Sure it will. If Windows is nowhere in Japan, OS/2 is nothing, nowhere, and
nonexistant.
Please, OS/2 in Japan? It's a joke. Macintosh is the king (ignoring
the hideous NEC aberration) and Windows is a growing second. OS/2? Heh.
Gary Morris
> : off of other systems I helped install WARP on. Win 95 even in the Beta
> : version is far nicer and much faster.
>
> This is something I have done and wholeheartedly agreed.
>
whatever it's called? I've heard it has a SIMBOLIC LINK (enlighten me as
to what that is!) which seems to kind of unreliable.
--
Gary Morris
Sherwood Park Remote Systems
ga...@sprsys.doctor.ampr.ab.ca
Tom Krotchko
>"We're a bestseller in Europe!" - Commodore Amiga.
The funny part about that line is that I went to "Europe", Germany
specifically when all the Amiga hype was going on, and the Amiga was
nowhere to be seen.
In fact, the German PC was eerily like the US computer scene, so I'm
skeptical of anyone saying "but its big in Europe".
--
Tom Krotchko
<to...@access.digex.net>
rj friedman
>Not a chance in my book. I am taking it off not only my system but also
>off of other systems I helped install WARP on. Win 95 even in the Beta
>version is far nicer and much faster.
>
>I can use it just as it stands even if they never release a finsished
>version!
Sure it is - that's why BG recently announced ANOTHER delay - now he wants
you to believe you're going to bite the carrot in September. Pull that cart!
<<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>>
[RJ] OS/2 WARP 3.0
rj friedman Live it, or live with it!
Taibei, Taiwan r...@tpts1.seed.net.tw
<<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>><<*>>
Michael Hermann
History tells us that for the PC europe is a larger market than Japan
(probably for everything else too..) and the US is only somewhat ahead
(if at all). History also tells us that the americans are ignorant
of that fact (very US centric view of the world)
You can't compare Amiga to OS/2 just because both of them are a
success in europe.. even when the Amiga was a success it was selling
less than OS/2 does now, besides it sure survived a few years just
on the european userbase, only Commodores repeated marketing and
strategic blunders could eventually kill it
-Mike
Terje A. Bergesen
rsro...@Glue.umd.edu (Robert Stephen Rodgers) wrote:
> In article <3kotrr$f...@news.rz.uni-passau.de>,
> Michael Hermann <her...@calvin.uni-passau.de> wrote:
[Compress]
> >You can't compare Amiga to OS/2 just because both of them are a
> >success in europe..
>
> even have a rational meaning of the word "success."
Such a brilliant intelligence. Ah, now I get it. The Amiga wend down the
drain because it was so popular in Europe.
Where does this guy take his ideas from.
> >even when the Amiga was a success it was selling
> >less than OS/2 does now, besides it sure survived a few years just
> >on the european userbase, only Commodores repeated marketing and
> >strategic blunders could eventually kill it
>
> Commodore made blunders, but they also didn't have money for the kind of
> development they needed to keep up with the US-dominated Far East-hosted
> PC market. Being big in Europ has never helped anyone, except maybe
> Benetton.
Ah well, there are other products in the world than PC's. I bet we have
MUCH better WHALE meat in Norway than you do in the US.
_______________________________________________________________________
Terje Bergesen - Bergesen Data
jo...@ibm.net
Very true but history also tells us that you cannot win until
you ship product and it passes the customer test. NT desktop for
instance. It's like playing RISK. You cannot win with europe
but getting a toe-hold there 1st and moving into the US is much
better than Shipping 400,000 BETA copies.
gni...@ibm.net
Hey, the Amiga failed because US marketing stunk. Just because it was successful
in europe doesn't mean that the Europeans are wierd of anything, in fact I have to
say that the Amiga, when in it's hayday, was better than any PC could ever have dreamed.
Also, Japan doesn't count for shit in the success of product in the computer industry 'cause they
are probably the most computer illiterate nation I have ever been to. The vast majority
of the Japanese don't use computers, they play nintendo. The europeans may not be
the economic powerhouse that Japan is but they are certainly more progressive when
it comes to computer tech. Just look at the European demo scene, the have 15-18 year old
kids who know more about Assembaly programming than most employees of MS!
Mike Dahmus
>(probably for everything else too..) and the US is only somewhat ahead
>(if at all). History also tells us that the americans are ignorant
>of that fact (very US centric view of the world)
Sorry, as much as I'd like to agree, this is rubbish.
What's more profitable - selling one version of a product to 300 million
consumers, or selling 15 different versions to 250 million consumers?
(Plus, a lot of those 250 million end up just using the version originally
written for those 300 million ignorant Americans!)
--
Mike Dahmus Curator, rec.sport.football Hall o' Bait
mi...@gate.net also mi...@vnet.ibm.com
Please don't vote me new Kibo! "Something must be BROKEN here at IBM!"
jim frost
>In article <3kotrr$f...@news.rz.uni-passau.de>,
>Michael Hermann <her...@calvin.uni-passau.de> wrote:
>>History tells us that for the PC europe is a larger market than Japan
>>(probably for everything else too..) and the US is only somewhat ahead
>>(if at all). History also tells us that the americans are ignorant
>>of that fact (very US centric view of the world)
>Sorry, as much as I'd like to agree, this is rubbish.
>What's more profitable - selling one version of a product to 300 million
>consumers, or selling 15 different versions to 250 million consumers?
>(Plus, a lot of those 250 million end up just using the version originally
>written for those 300 million ignorant Americans!)
My last company sold into a variety of different countries and I
picked up the following:
1. European sales were small compared to US sales (~25%), although
they generated a higher price even though the product was identical --
therefore yielding a greater per-sale profit.
2. Japanese sales were roughly the same as all of Europe but required
considerable work to Japanify the product. They also sold at a higher
price but the added development cost essentially eliminated additional
profit.
It's hard to write off a 50% boost in sales, and even larger profits,
for very little additional work.
Robert Stephen Rodgers
>|>
>|> History tells us that if you're not a success in the United States or
>|> Japan, you're nowhere, a bit player.
>
>
>History tells us that for the PC europe is a larger market than Japan
That's true.
>(probably for everything else too..)
But this isn't true. Not at all.
>and the US is only somewhat ahead
>(if at all). History also tells us that the americans are ignorant
>of that fact (very US centric view of the world)
But history tells us that the US-centric view of the world is not only
incredibly valid, but also undeniable. It may bother you Europeans to be
the dog that's wagged by the tail -- but face it, Airbus, ARM, etc. would
all flop without government assistance (Acorn in the case of school purchases
that block out PCs and Macs which would be better suited) and that kind of
handholding has crippled your industries.
There are no products that have taken the world by storm that were and
continued to be dominated by European companies. Even when you invent
something the Japanese or the US just take it out of your hands.
>You can't compare Amiga to OS/2 just because both of them are a
>success in europe..
Such a success that it drove Commodore into bankruptcy. You guys don't
even have a rational meaning of the word "success."
>even when the Amiga was a success it was selling
>less than OS/2 does now, besides it sure survived a few years just
>on the european userbase, only Commodores repeated marketing and
>strategic blunders could eventually kill it
Commodore made blunders, but they also didn't have money for the kind of
Dave Shuman
to...@access.digex.net (Tom Krotchko) wrote:
> In article <3klccd$k...@onramp.arc.nasa.gov>, jo...@eco.arc.nasa.gov says...
>
>
> >In April WIN95 sees light for the FIRST Time.
>
> Yep. Game over, man. Do you predict OS/2 sales will fall off immediately,
> or will they hold up until the general release of Win95?
>
exposed to an unprepared audience. Even Steve Balmer has admitted that
device drivers can crash W95, and unblessed device drivers are very likely
to show up soon after the April release. Of course bad device drivers can
crash OS/2 also, but the current crop of OS/2 device drivers is far more
mature than what the unprepared W95 user is likely to see. I guess by then we
will probably hear a lot of "just wait for Cairo, it will bury OS/2" <G>
This should be fun to watch! :-) Dave S.
Robert Rodgers
>bog...@ibm.net writes:
>>Japan is still nowhere as far as windows goes, it has not caught on there.
>>OS/2 will come preloaded on Toshiba and NEC in Japan and Europe.
>
>Unfortunately (for OS/2, that is) NT has considerably better support
>for Japanese and most other non-Western languages than does OS/2 as a
>result of its use of UNICODE. That puts OS/2 at an incredible
>disadvantage in such countries.
Except that MS's Word/NT doesn't support Unicode.
MSN has one redeeming feature: You can catch MSers online and watch
them struggle as you pin them down on exactly why Microsoft's NT
applications didn't support Unicode. I particularly like the "file
format would have to change" excuse.
It would have been a lot better had MS supported Unicode in Windows
95. Perhaps the Plus Pack adds this support -- I doubt it.
Nonetheless, NT/J is a much nicer environment than most Japanese
platforms I've used. The main problem with it is that MS is still
using the 1980's era single language localization instead of something
worth of Unicode -- Apple's Worldscript support (e.g., the JLK and
CLK) is a good example of what MS *could* be doing with NT. Even
NeXTSTEP had better -- as in, more flexible [and not in terms of basic
foundations -- Unicode is better] multi-language support.
Lunde's book is a bit partisan to Adobe, but it is otherwise a great
source of material of reasons to hate JIS and EUC.
Robert Rodgers
DCBS. Heh.
I bet you think the ultra-sucessful alternatives to ASCII are a
good idea, too.
bo...@kirwaido.trystero.com
Yep. As a casual observer of a beta, I expect the 'gamers' to have
about the same level of complaints about how their sound boards don't
work etc., as the OS/2 'gamers'.
From what I've observed, Win '95 has done a reasonable job of
beautifying their GUI. But there's still work to be done in
stabilization. I gather MS has pulled ppl from CAIRO and MS at Work to
get the final product out 'on-time' whatever that means.
Robert Rodgers
dsh...@netcom.com (Dave Shuman) wrote:
>OS/2 sales may even accelerate when the low tech alternative is actually
>exposed to an unprepared audience. Even Steve Balmer has admitted that
>device drivers can crash W95,
Device drivers can, and do, crash OS/2. They can crash NT and Unix,
too. On all of these operating systems, they run at ring 0.
So what's your point?
"Even Dave Shuman has admitted that device drivers can crash Warp."
Carl Camera
Robert Stephen Rodgers <rsro...@Glue.umd.edu> wrote:
>But history tells us that the US-centric view of the world is not only
>incredibly valid, but also undeniable. It may bother you Europeans to be
>the dog that's wagged by the tail -- but face it, Airbus, ARM, etc. would
>all flop without government assistance (Acorn in the case of school purchases
>that block out PCs and Macs which would be better suited) and that kind of
>handholding has crippled your industries.
>
>There are no products that have taken the world by storm that were and
>continued to be dominated by European companies. Even when you invent
>something the Japanese or the US just take it out of your hands.
.....unfufilled in angering only the OS/2 community, RSR
sets his sites higher, torquing off an entire continent!
In honor of this event let's all hop into our BMWs, drive
to a local pub for a Heinekin and some tiramisu. Ciao.
Carl.
[Team OS/2] [COE] [IBM Employee]
>>> My posts reflect my opinions exclusively.
James R. McClure Jr.
> I think you've been reading the c.o.o.a view of MS for too long.
> They're just this big company with an unusually large number of
> talented people and an attitude. They make good products. (I should
Peace Brian,
Like Word 6.0 for Windows with several thousand _known_ bugs when it
was released!
Nil carborundum illigitimi,
James R. McClure Jr.
The OS/2 Apostle
<insert disclaimer here>
James R. McClure Jr.
>
> Victor Healey (vhe...@crl.com) wrote:
> : Not a chance in my book. I am taking it off not only my system but also
> : version is far nicer and much faster.
>
Peace all,
You can both send me your unused copies of OS/2. I can find them good
homes.
Wayne J. Hyde
<jrmc...@ulkyvm.louisville.edu> said:
> ata...@rmii.com (Brian Sturgill) wrote:
>> I think you've been reading the c.o.o.a view of MS for too long.
>> They're just this big company with an unusually large number of
>> talented people and an attitude. They make good products. (I should
> Like Word 6.0 for Windows with several thousand _known_ bugs when it
> was released!
I believe the rationale for this what that Word 6 with several thousand
bugs was still better than the competition at the time.
--
Wayne Hyde | Network Manager | w...@cis.ufl.edu
3461-267 SW 2nd Ave | Fla Cooperative Fish & | http://www.cis.ufl.edu/~wjh
Gainesville, FL 32607 | Wildlife Research Unit | I speak for me, nobody else
(904) 372-3602 | (904) 392-1861 | <This space for rent>
Joseph Coughlan
>In article <3klccd$k...@onramp.arc.nasa.gov>, jo...@eco.arc.nasa.gov says...
>
>>compatibility or perfromance problems.
>
>I had no idea you were a reporter that was under NDA. When the
>NDA is lifted, you'll be sure to tell us about the compatibility
>and/or performance problems you're alluding to, won't you?
Your're getting real weak Tom. The NDA has restricted negative talk.
Expectations are sky high. It can only go down after WIN95 starts
choking on old hardware, has compatibility problems and crashes.
>>Vic all you did was post fluff.
>
>When you wrote this, were you trying to be ironic or sarcastic?
I was being literal.
>>In April WIN95 sees light for the FIRST Time.
>
>Yep. Game over, man. Do you predict OS/2 sales will fall off immediately,
>or will they hold up until the general release of Win95?
OS/2 sales will INCREASE after the BETA is released and is reviewed.
That happened after NT3.1 was relased and shortly after NT3.5 was
released. Look for MS to release a Windows Classic in 1996.
>>WIN95 is doomed. You avoid hard numbers.
>
>This form of humor is very subtle, but I'd say there must be a way
>this sentence can be scrambled for its true meaning.
>
>Lets see:
>
>dr. moody shaw IOU 5. dead number 9 vision
>That's deep. I had no idea you were a beatles fan.
I ... burried ... Windows.
Robert Rodgers
ter...@vestnett.no (Terje A. Bergesen) wrote:
>In article <3kpine$d...@mocha.eng.umd.edu>,
>rsro...@Glue.umd.edu (Robert Stephen Rodgers) wrote:
>> In article <3kotrr$f...@news.rz.uni-passau.de>,
>> Michael Hermann <her...@calvin.uni-passau.de> wrote:
>[Compress]
>> >You can't compare Amiga to OS/2 just because both of them are a
>> >success in europe..
>>
>> Such a success that it drove Commodore into bankruptcy. You guys don't
>> even have a rational meaning of the word "success."
>
>Such a brilliant intelligence. Ah, now I get it. The Amiga wend down the
>drain because it was so popular in Europe.
>
>Where does this guy take his ideas from.
No causitive association, just a simple fact. Even if the Amiga was
big in Europe (I have my doubts), this didn't help it one bit. Once
the US went, along with it went a lot of the mainstream professional
productivity developers.
Curtis Roelle
>The final release deserves all the attention folks are giving it.
You make it sound as if it _has_ been released. And I hope it
gets the attention it deserves.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------
Curtis Roelle |Excess on occasion is exhilarating.
|It prevents moderation from acquiring
ape...@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu|the deadening effect of a habit.
Stuart A. Siegel
really stand .. by Robert S. Rodgers@Glue.u
> incredibly valid, but also undeniable.
I guess for your view of history, not mine. Please remember to include
the 'IMHO' disclaimer especially in context to something as subjective
as history. Ask a native American or a Cambodian villager if the
US-centric view is 'incredibly valid' or undeniable. Please, show some
humility. There is little room for such nationalism is today's world.
> It may bother you Europeans to be the dog that's wagged by the tail --
but > face it, Airbus, ARM, etc. would
> all flop without government assistance ... [deleted]
Please don't forget that Washington has gone to bat more than once for
domestic firms in anything *but* a 'competetive' spirit.. The recent
Saudi decision to go with Boeing over Airbus had a lot to do with
bolstered US influence in the wake of the gulf war. This type of
support from the US federal government, as well as other forms of
'incentives' such as enourmous tax breaks and not so subtle trade
restrictions make the premise that the US fosters a more competetive
environment, in the aviation and defense industries anyway, silly. If
you think that US arms suppliers would have had 75% of the world's
current export weapons market without nearly 50 years of generous
government support, I've got some swamp land in Arizona for you.
My point is that government support can be done in many ways. Some more
obvious than others.
cheers.
=================================================================
= Stuart Siegel =
= Dept. of Engineering and email: ss...@andrew.cmu.edu =
= Public Policy fax: 412-268-3757 =
= Baker Hall 129 voice: 412-268-2670 (message) =
= Carnegie Mellon University voice: 412-268-6826 (office) =
= Pittsburgh, PA 15213 =
=================================================================
Mike Dahmus
>>incredibly valid, but also undeniable. It may bother you Europeans to be
>>the dog that's wagged by the tail -- but face it, Airbus, ARM, etc. would
>>all flop without government assistance (Acorn in the case of school purchases
>>that block out PCs and Macs which would be better suited) and that kind of
>>handholding has crippled your industries.
>>
>>There are no products that have taken the world by storm that were and
>>continued to be dominated by European companies. Even when you invent
>>something the Japanese or the US just take it out of your hands.
>
> sets his sites higher, torquing off an entire continent!
Yep, but he's absolutely right. It really bugs me when people can't even
acknowledge a valid point made by someone because they disagree with their
politics (in this case, the fact that RSR doesn't like OS/2).
Centurion Computers
culb...@netcom.com (Lon Culbertson) wrote:
> Victor Healey (vhe...@crl.com) wrote:
> : Not a chance in my book. I am taking it off not only my system but also
> : off of other systems I helped install WARP on.
>
> plan, at least we can look forward to the absence of posts from you in the
> future.
>
We wish, can you really believe these guys, i still remember the Hype about NT,
the the beta was out, they said it was faster, slicker, better interface, but
when we tried it, it was the opposite.
Anyway, i like Warp, WIN95 is prettier, but i tend to go with a more functional
system instead of one with flowers on top.
-Jerry
Centurion Computers
I will never have to use a computer'
Now they ramp and rave about the only name they know in Computers
Microsoft.
> Think for a minute...
> People actually go into a store and BUY OS/2 Warp.
> Compare that to the "Oh it came on my computer, it MUST be the best"
> Windows preload crowd.
Exactly, that's what i have been trying to explain to folks here too.
But fortunately that's changing, as big Companies are starting to
preload WARP.
> I have seen the latest beta of Windows 95.
> I crashed it three times in the first 30 miutes doing SIMPLE things.
> Locked up solid when I tried to play three .avi files at once.
> Roy
Funny that's exactly that same thing that happened when we tested
a copy of WIN95, but remember it's only a beta.
I think OS/2 has a great future, at least we know that IBM don't just
dump their software like Microsoft seem to.
I still remember when Gates said that if the OS/2 reached the 4 million mark
that Microsoft would not be able to ignore it, well according to IBM they
have a current number of 7 million, i still don't see apps for OS/2 from
Microsoft and that's a big Enough market for any ISV to get rich off!!!
-Jerry
Christopher L. Estep
In article <3kj89n$m...@dcsun4.us.oracle.com>, <bha...@us.oracle.com> writes:
> And what do you base this "realistic scenario" on? What makes you think the
> Windows 95 beta release is going to stall OS/2 sales? Why do you think the
> Warp Connect (LAN Client) will be hastily released and buggy? From what I
> understand, Warp Connect has been slightly delayed. If IBM were really
worried
> about this Win95 beta, they probably would have released Warp Connect already.
> And why do you think OS/2 users are going to defect to a kludgy OS? Your
reasoning
> defies rationale.
Define "kludgy". It may sound like a hack (32-bit OS which is backward
compatible, driver-wise, to an earlier 16-bit released OS), but it is at LEAST
as solid TODAY as Warp is. Also, Windows 95 has a MUCH larger upgrade base to
deal with than OS/2 does (say twenty-five million DOS+Windows users in the US
alone, which MS will NOT alienate). If only ONE-THIRD of this number upgrades
within the first year (a similar percentage to the number of OS/2 2.1 users who
upgraded to Warp) that IN ITSELF would mean EIGHT MILLION UPGRADES to Windows 95
(a number higher than the TOTAL number of OS/2 users worldwide) in JUST THE US!
Remember this is assuming that only ONE-THIRD of twenty-five million US
DOS+Windows users upgrade! Say that there are a HIGHER number of US DOS+Windows
users (the original userbase estimate I gave assumes that HALF the copies of
Windows sold/distributed are shelfware): this could be a truly blockbuster
upgrade. And remember, I am NOT including distribution with new systems OR
upgrades to DOS-only systems.
>
> >
> > March, April = 2*200,000 = 400,000
> > May, June, July, August = 4*100,000 = 400,000
> > September-December = 4*100,000 = 400,000
> > but 2,000,000 OS/2 users defect to Windows 95.
> >
> >This would make OS/2's number of real users 3,200,000 at the end of 95.
>
> Yea, right.
>
> >
> >From an historical standpoint, my "more realistic" projection is not
> >unreasonable as OS/2 has only been growing at about 1.34 million real users
> >per year. Windows 95's release will definately have a negative
> >impact on OS/2 sales. And there will undoubtedly be defections.
>
> I hate to say this. But I remember seeing you rant and rave the these same
ideas
> when NT was still in the wings.
>
> >
> >The point here is that there are more Mac users than the 7,000,000
> >rosy projection for OS/2 and Apple is losing ISVs all the time.
> >If IBM can't get mainstream apps for OS/2, then it simply
> >can't become a mainstream OS.
> >
> >Further, even OS/2 advocates admit that OS/2's user base is very
> >much "server/developer" oriented...
>
> ...this is changing...
>
> [...]
>
> >Desktop OS decisions are based on app support, and Windows 95
> >has _already_ won this hands down. The products may not yet be
> >shipping, but there is no Windows vendor that hasn't at least laid
> >the groundwork.
>
> Again, this smacks of your NT advocacy two years ago. I recall going to
Comdex
> back then and seeing developers touting their "NT" apps. Where are they all
now?
>
Those much-touted NT applications are still out there, and some of them will be
running on Windows 95 within wekks of Windows 95's release (some of them are on
Windows 95 beta site machines NOW!).
Christopher L. Estep
Windows 95 Beta Site
Proud User of WinZip 5.6 for Windows NT!
Intel-free since '93!
"Win32 is Alive in '95."
shi...@gate.net
Yet another polished turd from Micro$oft :)
Tom Krotchko
>Your're getting real weak Tom. The NDA has restricted negative talk.
Actually, that NDA has been lifted for several month. You can
get the beta now and hammer away. Tell us what you don't like. Poke
holes in MS's hope.
>>Lets see:
>>
>>dr. moody shaw IOU 5. dead number 9 vision
>
>>That's deep. I had no idea you were a beatles fan.
>
>I ... burried ... Windows.
The walrus was OS/2...coo coo kachoo
--
Tom Krotchko
<to...@access.digex.net>
imw...@ibm.net
">Not a chance in my book. I am taking it off not only my system but also
">version is far nicer and much faster.
judge it simply on a cursory glance???? You are full of crap. What kind
of stress tests have you put this o.s. under to justify your conclusions?
This absolutely necessary to judge system stability. Perhaps you would
prefer to have the hottest pistol in town that likes to periodically blow
up in your face. You are a real no-brainer.
Matt McLeod
>The number of real users is likely only 4 million (+/- 1 million).
>Windows 95 will indeed ship this year (I'm betting Sept.), but for
>sake of argument, let's say it ships in December.
One question that needs to be answered if anyone is going to try and
estimate just how many actual users there are is whether IBM takes returns
into account in their figures (unlike most software products, if you don't
like OS/2 you can send it back and get a full refund).
>We know Warp sales have slowed as IBM isn't bragging about 2 million
>yet. We also know that a fair number of Warp's sales are upgrades
>and tire-kickers so that IBM's current estimate is likely too large
>and will remain so as IBM cleverly failed to offer upgrades
>to Warp, so they can't "know" that it is not a new user. Thus we will
>have to do our own estimates of Warp's growth potential.
With Fullpack at least there is an upgrade edition, so it should be possible
to see how many are upgrades. You have to remember that IBM targetted the
first release of Warp at new users (although plenty of old users bought it
too - myself included).
>As Warp sales have slowed quickly, I think it is fair to say that a
>majority of sales were actually upgrades for Warp for Windows. IBM
>had a number of promotions and there was a lot of publicity, plus
>the price was cheap, so a fair portion were tire-kickers and as
>there were install problems, etc I think it fair to say a large
>number didn't stick. Thus I think a _maximum_ growth rate for
>Warp for Windows (in terms of added new users) is 250,000 a month.
>(They did 1,000,000 in 2 months divide by 2 because of upgrades, divide
>by 2 again because of the tire-kickers.)
Call it 500,000 a month - the tyre-kickers would have returned it if they
didn't like it. That's assuming IBM is being at least reasonably honest
with it's figures - not exactly a common trait in the IT industry.
>While sales of full-pack will be large at first (upgraders), it is
>unlikely to sell to new users as they already have copies of Windows,
>so it is probably irrelevant. Warp LAN Client (again making
>the rosy assumption that people will like what they see) may add
>to sales, but probably not until June.
I beg to differ. In many cases, users purchasing a new machine now have to
pay extra to get DOS and Windows - so plenty of those newer users may well
not even have Windows - making Fullpack an attractive option (especially as
it's often cheaper than buying DOS/Windows anyway).
Plus there are the bundles to consider. It may not be common in the US, but
at least in Australia and Europe things are picking up (Osborne and Vobis,
two of the biggest sellers of PCs in these two areas are bundling OS/2 by
default, and IBM have finally started too).
>So we have:
> March, April, May = 3*250,000 = 750,000
> June - December = 7*300,000 = 2,100,000
Or:
In the first instance = 3*500,000 = 1,500,000
In the second instance = 7*550,000 = 3,850,000
>So _at_ best (and this is an inconceivably rosy scenario) OS/2
>could have a base of real users number 7,000,000 by the end of the
>year, and this assumes Windows 95 slips to the end of the year.
Or, at best, and assuming IBM has been honest (I don't know much about US
law, but I assume that the presumption of innocence still applies... :-)),
the figure is in tha area of 13,000,000.
>A more realistic scenario:
>The Windows 95 wide beta release stalls OS/2 sales, a hastily released
>Warp LAN Client is too buggy and hurts sales further. Windows 95
>releases in September, and there are large defections from OS/2.
> March, April = 2*200,000 = 400,000
> May, June, July, August = 4*100,000 = 400,000
> September-December = 4*100,000 = 400,000
> but 2,000,000 OS/2 users defect to Windows 95.
Or:
March-May = 3*500,000 = 1,500,000
June-August = 3*500,000 = 1,500,000
(assuming a negative impact of 50,000 by Win95 beta)
September-December = 4*250,000 = 1,000,000
(obviously Win95 will impact on sales - if it's out yet)
Defections: not terribly many - users who've not returned Warp
can be assumed to be happy with it, and unlikely to go through
yet another OS switch unless there's some real good reason (and MSN
ain't it).
>This would make OS/2's number of real users 3,200,000 at the end of 95.
Or: 11,000,000 at the end of 95.
>From an historical standpoint, my "more realistic" projection is not
>unreasonable as OS/2 has only been growing at about 1.34 million real users
>per year. Windows 95's release will definately have a negative
>impact on OS/2 sales. And there will undoubtedly be defections.
And, of course, there will undoubtably be defections going the other way,
too - from users who moved to Win95, got used to having a better desktop and
long filenames, but got sick of 16-bit apps bombing the system (why are they
running 16-bit apps? Because many of the 32-bit apps aren't there yet, and
they really don't want to spend mucho dollars on yet another round of
application upgrades just yet).
>The point here is that there are more Mac users than the 7,000,000
>rosy projection for OS/2 and Apple is losing ISVs all the time.
>If IBM can't get mainstream apps for OS/2, then it simply
>can't become a mainstream OS.
The pint here being that you can prove almost anything with statistics -
including, but not usually, the truth.
Now, I (unlike you) am not going to claim that my "projections" (such as
they are) are necessarily correct. But, if the final release of Windows95
is anything like the betas, I think OS/2 has a long and prosperous future
ahead...
Matt
--
Matt McLeod "Bonvolu alsendi la pordiston
Freelance General-Purpose Geek lausajne estas rano en mia bideo."
ma...@scorch.hna.com.au - AJ Rimmer
Curtis Bass
-- snip --
> Define "kludgy". It may sound like a hack (32-bit OS which is backward
> compatible, driver-wise, to an earlier 16-bit released OS), but it is at LEAST
> as solid TODAY as Warp is. Also, Windows 95 has a MUCH larger upgrade base to
Kludge: An inelegant, hacked software solution, written with
minimal up-front design, and constrained by existing
software shortcomings. (i.e. Win9x)
"[Win9x] it is at LEAST as solid TODAY as Warp is." Is this flame bait, or are
you simply kidding? All reports that I read clearly state that Warp is FAR more
robust than Win9x.
-- [wild predictions of runaway Win9x success and OS/2's demise deleted] --
> Christopher L. Estep
> Windows 95 Beta Site
> Proud User of WinZip 5.6 for Windows NT!
> Intel-free since '93!
> "Win32 is Alive in '95."
Curtis Bass
Software Systems Specialist II
University of Texas Medical Branch
Terje A. Bergesen
Ah, well, reread the lines on top of this message. You say:
'Such a success that it drove Commodore into bankruptcy. You guys don't
even have a rational meaning of the word "success."'
Now what you are saying is that the (supposed) success of the Amiga
in Europe _is the reason Commodore went out of business_. I call that
brilliant logic.
As for the success in Europe, I have seen it sold mainly to kids,
and those that have TV presentations. It is nicely suited for that,
and also for games for the kids. It never got into the part of the
marked where the money is though.
_______________________________________________________________________
Terje Bergesen - Bergesen Data
Dave Shuman
rsro...@eng.umd.edu (Robert Rodgers) wrote:
> In article <Zf5SluIz...@netcom.com>,
> dsh...@netcom.com (Dave Shuman) wrote:
> >OS/2 sales may even accelerate when the low tech alternative is actually
> >exposed to an unprepared audience. Even Steve Balmer has admitted that
> >device drivers can crash W95,
>
> Device drivers can, and do, crash OS/2. They can crash NT and Unix,
> too. On all of these operating systems, they run at ring 0.
Right, Ring0 is a dangerous place for untried device drivers. The
unsuspecting Win95 users will get to understand that very well, as users
of more mature systems have already experienced. Thankfully, those
days are far in the past for most OS/2 users.
>
> So what's your point?
The point came in the rest of the sentence, which you so carefully
omitted. Reread it, if you *really* want to know.
>
> "Even Dave Shuman has admitted that device drivers can crash Warp."
>
Wow, I'm impressed! I'm just as quotable as a senior vice president
of Microsoft! <G>
Dave S.
Dan Pop
>Define "kludgy". It may sound like a hack (32-bit OS which is backward
>compatible, driver-wise, to an earlier 16-bit released OS), but it is at LEAST
>as solid TODAY as Warp is. Also, Windows 95 has a MUCH larger upgrade base to
>deal with than OS/2 does (say twenty-five million DOS+Windows users in the US
>alone, which MS will NOT alienate). If only ONE-THIRD of this number upgrades
>within the first year (a similar percentage to the number of OS/2 2.1 users who
>upgraded to Warp) that IN ITSELF would mean EIGHT MILLION UPGRADES to Windows 95
Your analogy is severely broken. People who run OS/2 have installed it
themselves, so there was no problem for them to upgrade to Warp.
The tens of millions of Windows users have never installed Windows
themselves and have no intention to do this. They will _never_ upgrade
their OS on their current machines. When they'll buy a new one, they
will get Win 9x preloaded on it. But they'll never change the OS
themselves.
I've seen a user, far above the level of the typical MS/Win user, trying
to upgrade his 3.0 to 3.1. It was not at all straightforward, and he
had to spend many hours until he managed to get it somehow running.
Joe User cannot do this. Expecting one third of the number of Windows
users to upgrade is simply foolish. It won't happen, period.
>Those much-touted NT applications are still out there, and some of them will be
>running on Windows 95 within wekks of Windows 95's release (some of them are on
>Windows 95 beta site machines NOW!).
>
It doesn't make too much sense to speak about the release of Windows 95.
Windows 4 has never been released. Chicago has never been released.
There is no serious reason to believe that Windows 95 will be released.
Call it Windows 9x if you want to be on the safe side.
Dan
--
Dan Pop
CERN, CN Division
Email: dan...@cernapo.cern.ch
Mail: CERN - PPE, Bat. 31 R-004, CH-1211 Geneve 23, Switzerland
Joseph Coughlan
>On 23 Mar 1995 16:00:04 GMT, "James R. McClure Jr."
>> Like Word 6.0 for Windows with several thousand _known_ bugs when it
>> was released!
>
>I believe the rationale for this what that Word 6 with several thousand
>bugs was still better than the competition at the time.
That's MS rationale but then WP MAC has been selling EQUALLY with MS
WORD on the MAC since the buggy, slow WORD 6.0 release.
How did we ever digress to the idea that a buggy system was better ?
Stop the madness.
jim frost
>The NDA has restricted negative talk.
>Expectations are sky high. It can only go down after WIN95 starts
>choking on old hardware, has compatibility problems and crashes.
That was probably true, but it shouldn't be for much longer. I just
got the "Windows 95 Pre-Release" disk in the mail from MSDN, which
means there are a few tens of thousands of people getting their hands
on it with no NDA restrictions at all.
Dunno what I'll do with it.
jim frost
ji...@world.std.com
--
http://www.std.com/homepages/jimf
Brian Sturgill
: On 23 Mar 1995 16:00:04 GMT, "James R. McClure Jr."
: <jrmc...@ulkyvm.louisville.edu> said:
: > ata...@rmii.com (Brian Sturgill) wrote:
: >> I think you've been reading the c.o.o.a view of MS for too long.
: >> They're just this big company with an unusually large number of
: >> talented people and an attitude. They make good products. (I should
: > Like Word 6.0 for Windows with several thousand _known_ bugs when it
: > was released!
: I believe the rationale for this what that Word 6 with several thousand
: bugs was still better than the competition at the time.
I have no idea what the source of this information is, and have extreme
doubts that it is true, or at least that the facts have been misinterpreted.
All I can say is that if it has several thousand bugs, I never seem to
hit any of them. Surely, from the standpoint of users, this is what
really counts anyway.
Brian
--
C. Brian Sturgill Internet: br...@ataman.com
President and Chief Technical Officer CompuServe: 70363,1373
Ataman Software, Inc. Telephone: (303) 416-9199
749 S. Lemay, Suite A3-411 FAX: (303) 416-9188
Ft. Collins, Colorado 80524 FTP Site: rmii.com:/pub2/ataman
Tom Hatton
>In article <3kld67$k...@onramp.arc.nasa.gov>,
>jo...@eco.arc.nasa.gov (Joseph Coughlan) wrote:
>>8 is too high. 5 is more realisitic. 60% of all OSs sold in europe
>>today are OS/2. Remember Europe ?
>"We're a bestseller in Europe!" - Commodore Amiga.
>History tells us that if you're not a success in the United States or
>Japan, you're nowhere, a bit player.
Microsoft has announced that perhpas 60% of sales are outside the US.
I guess they're but players too. Is OS/2 a bit player? Then NT doesn't
exist, since it's less than a bit.
--
Tom Hatton | "What you have is a pre-release version of the
hat...@cgl.ucsf.edu| first beta in Beta 3." - Rodney Savard clarifies
*******************| Microsoft's Win95 release strategy.
Ivan Samuelson
: Define "kludgy". It may sound like a hack (32-bit OS which is backward
: compatible, driver-wise, to an earlier 16-bit released OS), but it is at LEAST
: as solid TODAY as Warp is. Also, Windows 95 has a MUCH larger upgrade base to
: deal with than OS/2 does (say twenty-five million DOS+Windows users in the US
: alone, which MS will NOT alienate). If only ONE-THIRD of this number upgrades
I'm not so sure of that one. It may not be MS that alienates, but the
programs written by other vendors most likely will. Many vendors are finding
that writing for Win32s is NOT at all economical for them. THe API is
constantly changing, and it doesn't allow use of the new API features in
Win95. Therefore, many vendors are choosing to abandon Win32s altogether
and write native Win95 code. I'd say that leaves Win 3.1 users out in the
cold. MS may not have alienated the DOS+Windows users directly, but they
have done it. Hmmm...marketing ploy to "force" users to upgrade who don't
want to and were planning to run Win32s?
I've also read an article an article (on a Web Page) for PC Week (I THINK)
where they talk about the next release of Win95 beta. Not a very glowing
review. They still feel it won't be a total wash-out, but Win95 is NOT
living up to its expectations per this review. I can't remember the
URL, but if I find it, I'll post it if people want.
--
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ivan Samuelson *
Consultant * If C++ is the language of the future, is ++C the
Profound Consulting * language of the past?
Joseph Coughlan
>jo...@eco.arc.nasa.gov (Joseph Coughlan) writes:
>>The NDA has restricted negative talk.
>>Expectations are sky high. It can only go down after WIN95 starts
>>choking on old hardware, has compatibility problems and crashes.
>
>That was probably true, but it shouldn't be for much longer. I just
>got the "Windows 95 Pre-Release" disk in the mail from MSDN, which
>means there are a few tens of thousands of people getting their hands
>on it with no NDA restrictions at all.
Yes.
The PCWeek WWW.ZIFF.COM has a preview and for the 1st time users get to
read bad news. Once people realize that the WIN95 environment is no
faster than WARP they'll begin to appreciate WARP for what it has been
for all these years. I'm not sure how to do some hard benchmarks but I
will be interested in playing.
>Dunno what I'll do with it.
I did copy the WIN95.BMP for my WARP background.
James R. McClure Jr.
>
> Wayne J. Hyde (w...@rock.cis.ufl.edu) wrote:
> : On 23 Mar 1995 16:00:04 GMT, "James R. McClure Jr."
> : <jrmc...@ulkyvm.louisville.edu> said:
>
> : > ata...@rmii.com (Brian Sturgill) wrote:
> : >> I think you've been reading the c.o.o.a view of MS for too long.
> : >> They're just this big company with an unusually large number of
> : >> talented people and an attitude. They make good products. (I should
>
> : > Like Word 6.0 for Windows with several thousand _known_ bugs when it
> : > was released!
>
> : I believe the rationale for this what that Word 6 with several thousand
> : bugs was still better than the competition at the time.
>
> I have no idea what the source of this information is, and have extreme
> doubts that it is true, or at least that the facts have been misinterpreted.
> All I can say is that if it has several thousand bugs, I never seem to
> hit any of them. Surely, from the standpoint of users, this is what
> really counts anyway.
Peace Brian,
Thanks for calling me a liar. I really appreciate that. It was widely
reported that WordPerfect 6.0 had 8000 known bugs and that Word had upwards
of 32000 known bugs when released. If you have a problem with these
numbers, I suggest you take it up with the computer trade pubs.
Andy Longton
: Wayne J. Hyde (w...@rock.cis.ufl.edu) wrote:
: : > Like Word 6.0 for Windows with several thousand _known_ bugs when it
: : > was released!
: : I believe the rationale for this what that Word 6 with several thousand
: : bugs was still better than the competition at the time.
: I have no idea what the source of this information is, and have extreme
: doubts that it is true, or at least that the facts have been misinterpreted.
: All I can say is that if it has several thousand bugs, I never seem to
: hit any of them. Surely, from the standpoint of users, this is what
: really counts anyway.
Hmmm. We're talking about Word 6.0, right? Hated the damn thing. The
patches helped, but not a whole hell of a lot. The only thing that irks
me more is Novell's GroupWise mail client -- cut, paste, CRASH!
It's a good thing I'm using Warp at home....
Paul Floyd
>In article <3kld67$k...@onramp.arc.nasa.gov>,
>jo...@eco.arc.nasa.gov (Joseph Coughlan) wrote:
>>8 is too high. 5 is more realisitic. 60% of all OSs sold in europe
>>today are OS/2. Remember Europe ?
>"We're a bestseller in Europe!" - Commodore Amiga.
>History tells us that if you're not a success in the United States or
>Japan, you're nowhere, a bit player.
A few observations.
Japan has, reportedly, the highest rate of corporate software
piracy in the western world. A fine setting for selling programs.
The USA is undeniably the largest single market (for one language).
However, the European Union has had a free internal market since
1993, making it the largest single market in the world (but with
several different languages).
Aside.
I hope you aren't one of those bozos that puts ", England" after
every placename in the UK. "Eedinberg, England".
--
Paul Floyd, Information Storage Research Group, Division of Electrical Eng.,
School of Engineering, University of Manchester
Edification - the process of changing your name to be "Edward"
pa...@meed47.ee.man.ac.uk [home page awaiting maintenance]
Chris Sheppard
>From: dan...@cernapo.cern.ch (Dan Pop)
>Subject: Re: Does OS/2 really stand a chance?
>Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 13:30:23 GMT
What are you doing here? Got tired of being reasonable, so you came here
to have some fun?
Anyway... I thought Chicago WAS Windoze 9x?
Sorry about clogging up the group with useless drivel, but then, this is a
newsgroup devoted to a man who clogged the market with useless drivel, so I'
m following in his footsteps.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Chris Sheppard
Centurion Computers
mi...@news.gate.net (Mike Dahmus) wrote:
> In article <3kotrr$f...@news.rz.uni-passau.de>,
> Michael Hermann <her...@calvin.uni-passau.de> wrote:
> >(probably for everything else too..) and the US is only somewhat ahead
> >(if at all). History also tells us that the americans are ignorant
> >of that fact (very US centric view of the world)
>
> Sorry, as much as I'd like to agree, this is rubbish.
>
As much as i would like to disagree, i think this is rather true.
> What's more profitable - selling one version of a product to 300 million
> consumers, or selling 15 different versions to 250 million consumers?
>
> (Plus, a lot of those 250 million end up just using the version originally
> written for those 300 million ignorant Americans!)
Look again at your pop stats, ps: please don't compare the EU
to Japan, just have a look at the EU GDP and then we can talk
about what market is bigger. Don't forget 4 of the G7 are EU states.
Another example of US ignorance to EU (huh Japan!) ;-)))
-Jerry
Paul Floyd
>In article <3kotrr$f...@news.rz.uni-passau.de>,
>Michael Hermann <her...@calvin.uni-passau.de> wrote:
>>History tells us that for the PC europe is a larger market than Japan
>>(probably for everything else too..) and the US is only somewhat ahead
>>(if at all). History also tells us that the americans are ignorant
>>of that fact (very US centric view of the world)
>Sorry, as much as I'd like to agree, this is rubbish.
>What's more profitable - selling one version of a product to 300 million
>consumers, or selling 15 different versions to 250 million consumers?
>(Plus, a lot of those 250 million end up just using the version originally
>written for those 300 million ignorant Americans!)
You are ignorant to the size of the European Union. It was 330 million
a couple of years back, with Austria, Sweden, Finland and East Germany,
it is not much short of 400 million. UK English, German, French and
Italian cover about 230 million.
You also overestimate the "American" population - 240 million last
I read. The Canadians I believe speak French or UK English.
The marketing reports / analyses I've read put the EU ahead of
the US a couple of years ago (the EU has a higher population,
but that is partly offset by [I think] lower GDP per capita).
The gap is growing, and the EU is expanding.
>Mike Dahmus
Robert L Maynard
Look under the "quarterly report" heading. You will also find the full-year
'94 IBM income statement there.
U.S. Hardware Sales : $7.0 Billion
Euro Hardware Sales : $7.5 Billion
I'll take 0.1 or 1% of that "peanuts", please :-)
Bob
Robert Rodgers
jo...@eco.arc.nasa.gov (Joseph Coughlan) wrote:
>In article <3kll14$2...@news3.digex.net> to...@access.digex.net (Tom Krotchko) writes:
>>In article <3klccd$k...@onramp.arc.nasa.gov>, jo...@eco.arc.nasa.gov says...
>>>Unfortunately MS' NDA prevents a reporter from saying that WIN95 has
>>>compatibility or perfromance problems.
>>
>>I had no idea you were a reporter that was under NDA. When the
>>NDA is lifted, you'll be sure to tell us about the compatibility
>>and/or performance problems you're alluding to, won't you?
>
>Your're getting real weak Tom. The NDA has restricted negative talk.
This is nonsense. I have a whole list of Win95 negatives. Think my
NDA with MS is going to prevent me from saying them?
Answer: No.
>Expectations are sky high. It can only go down after WIN95 starts
>choking on old hardware, has compatibility problems and crashes.
No, then it would be OS/2.
Robert Rodgers
pa...@meed47.ee.man.ac.uk (Paul Floyd) wrote:
>>"We're a bestseller in Europe!" - Commodore Amiga.
>
>>History tells us that if you're not a success in the United States or
>>Japan, you're nowhere, a bit player.
>
>A few observations.
>Japan has, reportedly, the highest rate of corporate software
>piracy in the western world. A fine setting for selling programs.
You are mistaken. China (PRC) has the highest rate of piracy in the
world. Easily. They are overt about it.
>The USA is undeniably the largest single market (for one language).
>However, the European Union has had a free internal market since
>1993, making it the largest single market in the world (but with
>several different languages).
Largest single market for what? For computer software? If that's
what you're suggesting, it simply isn't true. Computers, and in
particular, Macintosh and IBM-compatible machines, have a much wider
market in the United States than they do in the EU. Sinclairs and
Altairs and Acorns and such don't help IBM and Microsoft sell
software.
Derek Smith
as does Windows. In all truth, the percentage of migration from one OS to
another is pretty low. Regardless of the quality of either product, neither
one will very likely make or break IBM nor Microsoft. Revolutions don't
happen overnight.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Derek Smith - de...@shell.masterpiece.com |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Hapscomb's Texaco sat on US 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant |
| four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston. Tonight the regulars were |
| there, sitting by the cash register, drinking beer, talking idly, |
| watching the bugs fly into the big lighted sign. |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| http://www.masterpiece.com/derek/ |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Terje A. Bergesen
pa...@meed47.ee.man.ac.uk (Paul Floyd) wrote:
> In <3kpeup$j...@seminole.gate.net>, mi...@news.gate.net (Mike Dahmus) writes:
> >In article <3kotrr$f...@news.rz.uni-passau.de>,
> >Michael Hermann <her...@calvin.uni-passau.de> wrote:
> >>History tells us that for the PC europe is a larger market than Japan
> >>(probably for everything else too..) and the US is only somewhat ahead
> >>(if at all). History also tells us that the americans are ignorant
> >>of that fact (very US centric view of the world)
>
> >Sorry, as much as I'd like to agree, this is rubbish.
>
> >What's more profitable - selling one version of a product to 300 million
> >consumers, or selling 15 different versions to 250 million consumers?
>
> >(Plus, a lot of those 250 million end up just using the version originally
> >written for those 300 million ignorant Americans!)
>
> You are ignorant to the size of the European Union. It was 330 million
> a couple of years back, with Austria, Sweden, Finland and East Germany,
> it is not much short of 400 million. UK English, German, French and
> Italian cover about 230 million.
>
> You also overestimate the "American" population - 240 million last
> I read. The Canadians I believe speak French or UK English.
There is another thing he misses - the fact that Europeans usually
pay quite a bit more for the nationalized apps than Americans. This
would make up for some of the loss in nationalizing the app.
Victor Healey
NO!
73's
Victor Healey (Ki4je)
AR8000 (The Ultimate Handheld Scanning Receiver) URLS on WWW
ftp://ftp.crl.com/users/vh/vhealey/www/ar8000.homepage.html
http://www.demon.co.uk/javiation
Dave Shuman
> jo...@eco.arc.nasa.gov (Joseph Coughlan) writes:
> >The NDA has restricted negative talk.
> >Expectations are sky high. It can only go down after WIN95 starts
> >choking on old hardware, has compatibility problems and crashes.
>
> That was probably true, but it shouldn't be for much longer. I just
> got the "Windows 95 Pre-Release" disk in the mail from MSDN, which
> means there are a few tens of thousands of people getting their hands
> on it with no NDA restrictions at all.
>
> Dunno what I'll do with it.
>
done on 24 March 95. Would that be the "Windows 95 Pre-Release" disk from
MSDN? If it was, it sounds like your disk might make a nice coaster for
a warm coffee pot. <G>
If you *must* use Windows, it sounds like NT is still the only game in town.
---------
Dave S. using OS/2 and Signature/2
Date(DMY): 26.03.95 , Time: 12:17:03
"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining,
but wants it back the minute it begins to rain."
Mark Twain, American Writer (1835-1910)
Sangria
>Right, Ring0 is a dangerous place for untried device drivers. The
>unsuspecting Win95 users will get to understand that very well, as users
>of more mature systems have already experienced. Thankfully, those
>days are far in the past for most OS/2 users.
Wait, is that to imply that OS/2 doesn't have any buggy drivers?
Whoa!
That would mean when my copy of Warp crashed 13 times in one week, it
was because of the OS???? Shit, I'm glad I yanked that sucker
off... :P
-- Sang.
*****************************************************************************
* Sang K. Choe san...@inlink.com *
* http://www.inlink.com/users/sangria/homepage.html *
*****************************************************************************
Mike Dahmus
>pa...@meed47.ee.man.ac.uk (Paul Floyd) writes:
>>The Canadians I believe speak French or UK English.
>
>
>In Quebec much of the populace is bilingual, particularly surrounding
>urban areas, so language isn't a barrier in software sales.
Ah, but it is. We must (for some reason) produce *different* French versions
for France and Canada. I think they use different keyboards or something.
I've always thought we should also produce Canadian English OS/2, which would
simply be the American English version, with all instances of "OK" changed
to "OK, eh?"
---
Mike Dahmus mail: mi...@bocaraton.ibm.com
Workplace OS Device IO Disclaimer: Not an official IBM spokesman
Earl H. Kinmonth
: In article <3l16ld$h...@yama.mcc.ac.uk>,
: Paul Floyd <pa...@meed47.ee.man.ac.uk> wrote:
: >In <3kpeup$j...@seminole.gate.net>, mi...@news.gate.net (Mike Dahmus) writes:
: >>In article <3kotrr$f...@news.rz.uni-passau.de>,
: >>Michael Hermann <her...@calvin.uni-passau.de> wrote:
: >>>History tells us that for the PC europe is a larger market than Japan
What history? Look at any set of trade statistics and you'll find
that Japan is often the most important or one of the most important
markets for any US product.
: >>What's more profitable - selling one version of a product to 300 million
: >>consumers, or selling 15 different versions to 250 million consumers?
Depends on a lot of things including price.
: >I read. The Canadians I believe speak French or UK English.
Predominant languages in Canada for the non-native population are
English and French. Unless you are a linguist specializing in
regional dialects, chances are you cannot tell Canadian English from
US English. As an American living in England, I'm regularly asked if
I'm a Canadian!
--
Earl H. Kinmonth, Centre for Japanese Studies, University of Sheffield,
Sheffield, England S10 2TN jp...@sunc.sheffield.ac.uk
jim frost
>The Canadians I believe speak French or UK English.
The Canadian English variant is far closer to the US variant than that
of the UK, mostly minor pronunciation differences (eg out, pronounced
"ow-t" in the US, is oo-t in Canada and is the usual telltale).
Similar variations are common in the US near the Quebec border (eg
most of northern NH where I grew up). Their French variant, spoken
primarily in Quebec (which basically considers itself its own nation
anyway), is marked by a number of severe variations from European
French and is quite unique in pronunciation.
In Quebec much of the populace is bilingual, particularly surrounding
urban areas, so language isn't a barrier in software sales.
FYI,
jim frost
>> That was probably true, but it shouldn't be for much longer. I just
>>
>> Dunno what I'll do with it.
>There was already one review, here in both .advocacy groups, of an install
>done on 24 March 95. Would that be the "Windows 95 Pre-Release" disk from
>MSDN? If it was, it sounds like your disk might make a nice coaster for
>a warm coffee pot. <G>
Being a bit of a masochist I installed it over the weekend and both my
wife and I played with it.
In general this product is a dramatic improvement over Win3.1. The
whole interface is a *lot* cleaner, and I found no compatibility
problems at all. The installation went pretty smoothly even though I
have a wide variety of hardware in that machine (IDE disks, an unusual
CD-ROM attached to a soundblaster controller, soundblaster hardware,
SCSI tape).
The new controls are a considerable improvement, but I'm not convinced
that it was a bright idea to put the new "close" icon right next to
the "maximize" icon.
I'm not particularly fond of the task bar. I don't like the "start"
menu at all, but it's easy to create "shortcuts", ala Mac aliases, on
the desktop or in folders. I much prefer that approach. Allowing
both can't hurt.
The icon-on-taskbar approach to showing active processes only works as
long as you have relatively few processes running. Typically I hit a
dozen -- and by that time you can forget it unless you want to lose a
lot of screen real-estate by expanding the bar vertically (which I
don't). A task list drop/pop menu would be much more useful for
someone like myself.
The single best migration feature is the "welcome" program that has a
lot of tips and tricks. I wish there were an index of tips, but it's
really useful as-is.
The desktop is a dramatic improvement over the FM/PM dichotomy and I
had no trouble falling into it. Unfortunately a number of things
confused me -- in particular, dragging an icon into another window
sometimes creates a shortcut and sometimes moves the item into the new
window. I couldn't figure out how it decided which to do (other than
the obvious "it's an executable," but it wasn't consistent for all
executables). I think it would have been smarter to create a
right-button option for "create shortcut" and keep the drag-and-drop
"move" operation unique.
The Hyperterm supplied with the package is the first terminal supplied
with an OS package that worked well enough for me to use it. It's
fast and usable. Only two complaints: no ability to remap backspace
to delete, and the huge border around the terminal window eats up a
lot of real-estate unnecessarily.
There should be a folder of shortcuts to the supplied applications,
particularly since it's hard to figure out file types from the
desktop given LFNs that are disassociated from extensions.
There should be an easier way to empty the trash (sorry, "recycle
bin", ick).
What about performance? I was using a 16M 486/33 with generic SVGA
and performance was great.
I did have a number of problems, all related to the Microsoft Network.
The biggest one is that I was totally unable to shut down the MSN
connection and then restart it. In fact, once the MSN connection had
been shut down, the Win95 "shutdown" procedure didn't work -- you had
to either power down the machine or three-finger-salute it twice.
The MSN software is pretty but needs a lot of usability work. Using a
v.32b/v.42b modem it was almost unusably slow, particularly
downloading the huge graphics associated with the opening screens
(which took several minutes, during which time other features are
still usable although slow). There is virtually no feedback when you
double-click on icons so you don't know if a window is slow to open or
if it didn't catch the double-click. The USENET interface is totally
unimaginative -- if you know your way around it's no problem, but if
you don't you might as well forget it. The interface would be fine
for a small BBS but is inadequate for managing 12,000+ newsgroups.
This is partially alleviated by links to specific USENET groups from
other groups in the MSN area.
Conclusions so far? The base OS product works quite well and is a
dramatic improvement over Windows 3.1. Performance and compatibility
are certainly "good enough" if not "excellent." The technical
improvements (eg preemptive multitasking) are not readily apparent
outside of long filenames and the dramatically improved (if somewhat
quirky) desktop.
Given my experiences with MSN it does not appear that Win95 is much
more robust in the face of buggy applications than was Win3.1. If you
want robustness I suggest you look elsewhere, but if you were happy
with Win3.1 then it'll be fine.
Unless some killer problem surfaces this product will do just fine as
a Windows replacement IMHO. It's a *lot* better than Windows, even
though it doesn't live up to all the promises Microsoft made.
gni...@ibm.net
;>"In <3kfq1e$s...@crl3.crl.com>, vhe...@crl.com (Victor Healey) writes:
;>">Not a chance in my book. I am taking it off not only my system but also
;>">off of other systems I helped install WARP on. Win 95 even in the Beta
;>">version is far nicer and much faster.
;> This a lot of "slick" b.s. You claim to know operating systems and you
;>judge it simply on a cursory glance???? You are full of crap. What kind
;>of stress tests have you put this o.s. under to justify your conclusions?
;>This absolutely necessary to judge system stability. Perhaps you would
;>prefer to have the hottest pistol in town that likes to periodically blow
;>up in your face. You are a real no-brainer.
;>
I have stress tested a relativley recent Beta2 build of Win95. I can tell you it is
very stable, multitasks seemlessly, and is a joy to install... NOT!!! Win95 is just
WFWG 3.11 with some upgrades. It's win16 multitasking is not as good as WFWG
3.11. and comparing this DOG to OS/2 or Unix or just about anything else is insane!
gni...@ibm.net
;>In <3kpeup$j...@seminole.gate.net>, mi...@news.gate.net (Mike Dahmus) writes:
;>>In article <3kotrr$f...@news.rz.uni-passau.de>,
;>>Michael Hermann <her...@calvin.uni-passau.de> wrote:
;>>>History tells us that for the PC europe is a larger market than Japan
;>>>(probably for everything else too..) and the US is only somewhat ahead
;>>>(if at all). History also tells us that the americans are ignorant
;>>>of that fact (very US centric view of the world)
;>
;>>Sorry, as much as I'd like to agree, this is rubbish.
;>
;>>What's more profitable - selling one version of a product to 300 million
;>>consumers, or selling 15 different versions to 250 million consumers?
;>
;>>(Plus, a lot of those 250 million end up just using the version originally
;>>written for those 300 million ignorant Americans!)
;>
;>You are ignorant to the size of the European Union. It was 330 million
;>a couple of years back, with Austria, Sweden, Finland and East Germany,
;>it is not much short of 400 million. UK English, German, French and
;>Italian cover about 230 million.
;>
;>You also overestimate the "American" population - 240 million last
;>I read. The Canadians I believe speak French or UK English.
Wrong, US population is 260 million, giver or take a few
and Candians that don't speak french speak with American type accents- don't
sound anything like British accents... New England accents are closest to Eng.
accents on North American continent.
;>The marketing reports / analyses I've read put the EU ahead of
;>the US a couple of years ago (the EU has a higher population,
;>but that is partly offset by [I think] lower GDP per capita).
;>The gap is growing, and the EU is expanding.
What ever... Sounds like wishfull dreaming rather than hard facts...
;>
;>>Mike Dahmus
gni...@ibm.net
;>In article <3l19df$n...@yama.mcc.ac.uk>,
Who cares about Altairs, Acorns, and Sinclairs... they are absolute crap... I
know 'cause when I lived overseas I was stupid enough to buy an Acorn
Archy. I had to use Sinclairs and RM Nimbus (UHHHHGGGGG...wretch...vomit)
machines in GCSE's and A'levels (British schools are excellent though) computing
classes. I hope you were not trying to compare those machines to Apple and PC
machines!
Joseph Coughlan
>jo...@eco.arc.nasa.gov (Joseph Coughlan) writes:
>>compatibility or perfromance problems.
>
>
>(Not that I think Win95 is all roses; I won't run it.)
So why did all this bad news wait until the public BETA ?