Re: FW: Re: FW: Windows 95 To: xywrite

[Mike Gawdun mgawdun@xxxxxxxx]

On Thu, 21 Sep 1995 19:11:18 -0500 (CDT) Harmon F Seaver replied
 to a post fm Mike Gawdun who wrote:
>>I installed Win95 over a Win 3.1 load on my home PC and the XW
runs >>better.

>  On the other hand, it won't multi-task 32bit apps, is much slower than
>warp, and will actually boot up and run in dos window in OS/2 -- also, when
>you are running it, you should run Microsfts nice MSD.exe utility >(included)
>which will tell you that it isn't anything but DOS 7 and enhanced >win31.

>Harmon Seaver

When I posted the original message, it was in response to someone
asking if XW runs on Win95 and I answered carefully, knowing
that many OS/2 fans are on on this listserver. I try not to be
too critical because my computing needs are very different than
everyone else's.

I have been using OS/2 for three years in an office setting where
 all 8000 PC users had OS/2 rammed down their throats because of
an incestious relationship between the on-site IBM sales force
and senior management who, for the most part, do not have PCs on
their desks and do not have to deal with OS/2 idiosyncrosies
(e.g., poor performance, poor support, poorly written help
sections, no comm drivers etc.) which require enormous staffs of
tech support folks.

The decision makers are not paying attention to the fact that
most PC applications in our company are Windows apps, not the
few OS/2 apps that behaved eratically and finally were not
supported by their vendors. I spend lots of time walking the
floors of our company and can't help but notice that all PCs are
running Windows apps on an OS/2 box. What a shame that our
company wasted all that money to put an additional layer of
software between the application and the hardware. Most fortune
500 companies are like this and we all complain about the high
cost of banking services, insurance, and health care. I no
longer wonder about why my insurance costs so much because I
know where the waste is and it is in poorly designed information
systems where the end user has little say about the operating
system and applications.

I work in a lab where we have every operating system made today.
The hardware includes IBM, Apple, Sun Microsystem, Silicon
Graphics, etc.

I work on OS/2 version 3.0 (Warp) and am not impressed with it. I
 shouldn't have to wrestle with installing an application or
hardware and when I call IBM for support, it takes days to get an
 answer because the tech support is so poor.

Not all of us need multitasking, in fact, when the high-speed
networks grow from small pilot trials and become production
systems in most companies in the next two years, I believe the
need for multitasking will disappear. The only reason it exists,
is because all corporate and wide area networks are slower than
computers. In this type of environment, it makes sense to do
several things at the same time because the processors are so
much faster than communications. But, a major shift is underway
as ATM technology migrates from the backbone to the desktop. The
networks of the future will be so fast, that we will forget that
multitasking was ever used to distinguish an operating system.

The reason I like Win95 is because it is actually fun to use.
Mapping to network drives is much easier, it feels better, and
supports everything on my desktop. My only complaint is that it
doesn't support multiple Domain Name Services. This means that
the DNS settings used are global in Win95 and I can not use
TCP/IP for communicating with both internal servers on our Token
Ring network and external Internet Service provider via modem or
ISDN. I can have only one DNS which has to be changed between
internal and external communications. This is a real pain.

------------------------------------- mgawdun@xxxxxxxx
Date: 09/21/95
Time: 21:07:19
San Antonio, TX
-------------------------------------