It's Grrrrrrrrrrreat! (OS/2), but...

["Carl L. Distefano" 70154.3452@xxxxxxxx]

James Besser writes:

>> I've tried to install OS/2 at least 5 times. ... I've installed all
>> kinds of software without a hitch; OS/2 is the *first*
>> program I couldn't get to work. If you have any suggestions, please
>> let me know.

Simple, James. Just throw out your hardware and get a computer that *will*
run OS/2! 

As someone who's happily run several flavors of XyWrite on two flavors of
OS/2 for 2+ years, I might have proffered that suggestion seriously as
recently as 6 months ago. (Multitasking can generate a certain euphoria,
especially if you haven't experienced it before. Watching two programs
write to the same floppy drive simultaneously still makes me giggle, gives
me the munchies.) But, let's face it, the handwriting's on the wall: IBM
is going to walk away from OS/2; that's been the scuttlebutt for many
weeks, and Gerstner's recent comments certainly do nothing to dispel those
fears.

True or not, it's abundantly clear that Win95/NT is where the development
action is going to be, and I don't intend to let the OS tail wag my choice
of applications. (Not to mention that the next major release of XyWrite --
due out soon -- will undoubtedly be a 32-bit version for Win95. Right,
TTG?) What I will do, eventually, is to get hold of something called
System Commander v2.0 -- reviewed very favorably by Nicholas Petreley in a
recent issue of InfoWorld -- which (it's said) allows multiple OS's to
coexist peaceably (in the same logical partition, no less), and lets you
switch easily among them. Petreley says he flipped effortlessly between
DOS, OS/2, Win95 and NT. That sounds good to me. (Next maybe someone will
invent some sort of Ubersoftware that will let us multitask OS's.)

While OS/2 will remain my primary house of worship, I'll be as ecumenical
as I need to be to run the software I want to run. Options, not orthodoxy,
should carry the day.

Now, about word-processors. Did I tell you about this really fast and
powerful editor that fits on a single floppy? (It's called XyWrite 4.)

--------------
Carl Distefano
70154.3452@xxxxxxxx