CompuServe Messages

Well, OS/2 2.1 is certainly a rock solid OS that delivers what it promises. Alas, it doesn't support my expensive graphics card and handles a vital SCSI device driver only in a DOS session so I really can't stick with it, and it would be far more of a knockout if there were more programs taking advantage of its multithreading. What it does have, though, makes you feel sad that IBM and MicroSoft went in different directions on it. MicroSoft has never put out a good version 1 of anything and I don't expect NT to be any different, even if they are calling it 3.1 instead of 1.0. A rose is a rose. The question there is twofold: NT is an OS, not a kludge shell, based on the same Unix mach 3 kernel as OS/2. Driver and video support will be as much of a question with NT as with OS/2, and, unlike OS/2, which doesn't hedge about running Windows, NT is only guaranteed to run what MicroSoft determines is the "top 100" WIN31 apps. That means whole new versions of most software, and by the time they come out we'll have the WIN32 kernel for Windows which will run NT apps under DOS Windows on a 486 or better. Indeed, some at MicroSoft on the latter project think it'll cripple or kill NT except for extensive networks. At any rate, anybody who installs NT without the dual boot option and with its high performance file system rather than the DOS one is going to have real surprises at what they won't be able to run!