#OS comparisons
12 messages in this thread
Robert,
"'NT 3.1 got a lot of bad press because it deserved it. Then Micros**t
hired Dave Cutler to head the NT project team.'
I thought Dave Cutler was in from the beginning. (before 3.1)"
He may have been, but I like VMS, and NT 3.5 IS a lot better than 3.1.
That kind of improved performance would not be a given from
Micros**t's in-house staff.
"Not to mention it has a big problem with device driver availability and with
NT you HAVE to have the right driver."
True. But by many accounts, the same problem plagues OS/2. I can't say I agree
or disagree. My OS/2 experience is measured in minutes, so I refuse to even
pretend to be an expert.
"It's true its "nearly" uncrashable. The only crashes we had when we had an NT
machine were network software."
The only crash I have had is from sending LOTS of differnt disk setups to the
filing system from Disk Administrator on a new installation; the poor system
didn't know whether to s**t or go blind. So it just locked up. But that was a
brand new installation; the only thing lost was a little time. The NT box in my
office has *never* crashed, and I've been using it every day for almost two
months <g>.
"While the resource requirements aren't unrealistic for some individuals and
shops, it is totally unrealistics for 90% of our installed PC's. Most don't
have enough CPU and RAM. I can run it at home, but I don't."
In your case, I certainly can't say that's not true. But my Business Unit
upgraded to all 486's or better last year. I like 386-25's for testing and have
most of the machines of that category that remain in service. My NT box is a
486-33 w/ 16 MB RAM. Individual apps do indeed run a little slower than under
regular Windows, but because I finally have REAL multitasking on a PC, I can
get around tasks in progress same as I've been doing with my Amiga for seven
years. Finally, as a personal purchase, I don't have ANY kind of PC. I am an
Amiga user. I flatly refuse to spend my money on 16-bit DOS/Windows. The system
I intend to buy is a Pentium. My experience (almost two months worth) says that
is plenty enough CPU for NT 3.5. Given Micros**t's design history, no doubt the
next version of NT will just barely plug along on a P6.
"That doesn't count CPU power, and do you know how much, even at these prices,
it would cost for us to upgrade all our PC's…"
We buy 486DX2-66 ISA motherboards for less than $300. Three years ago we went
from being a DOS shop to being a Windows shop. Putting a "pretty good" GUI in
the hands of our ordinary users paid off substantially in terms of individual
user productivity. Are you trying to hang on to old 286's? If so, the money you
are saving is being carved from your customers' hides. Yes, a global upgrade is
going to be expensive. But avoiding that upgrade is NOT free.
I don't have any stake in OS/2's failure. I just don't believe it will succeed
in the long run. The money cost of the OS is trivial; since I am looking at
buying a completely new system, whether I spend a couple hundred dollars on NT
or OS/2 is financially irrelevant. But I don't want to learn ANOTHER OS that
has no presence in my company, and which I believe to have no future. Sadly,
once (the Amiga) was enough.
Finally, my former boss came round my office yesterday. He specifically asked
about my "Commodore." I showed him the A2000 I have set up in my office tied to
a 14.4 modem which I use as my Compuserve machine. Two of my six PC's have
wallpaper scenes generated in Scenery Animator. And today I amazed another
co-worker analyst with the Amiga's features; remember I am impressing Pentium
owners with a 3-MB A2000. The Amiga may be just about gone, but as an Amiga
user, I have been spoiled. It's a tough act to follow.
Tab Trepagnier
Cruising on AutoPilot from Beaumont, Texas
"He may have been, but I like VMS, and NT 3.5 IS a lot better than 3.1.
3.5 is better than 3.1, but I'm not sure about the "lot" part. It improved
some things, but it still has a way to go.
"That kind of improved performance would not be a given from Micros**t's
in-house staff."
🙂 I partially agree, though I'm sure there's someone else at MS that can
program efficiently.
"True. But by many accounts, the same problem plagues OS/2."
It's true, there is a lack of drivers with OS/2, but there's more available for
OS/2 than NT, and OS/2 has some pretty good drivers that can handle several
different kinds of devices.
" My NT box is a 486-33 w/ 16 MB RAM. Individual apps do indeed run a
little slower than under regular Windows, but because I finally have
REAL multitasking on a PC, I can get around tasks in progress same as
I've been doing with my Amiga for seven years."
You must be more patient than I am, I wouldn't even consider running
NT with less than 24M. OS/2 on the other hand is comfortable in about
12M of ram, and when properly set up, doesn't crash any more than
Wint NT, plus it's faster than NT in every category except disk
performance.
You really ought to give OS/2 a fair chance before you totally deny its chances
in the marketplace. After all there are OS/2 has about 9X the user base that
NT has and the gap is widening.
"Finally, as a personal purchase, I don't have ANY kind of PC. I am an Amiga
user."
I would prefer to only have Amiga's at home to, but I need a PC too.
"I flatly refuse to spend my money on 16-bit DOS/Windows."
So do I, that's why I run OS/2 as my primary OS. I am currently testing Win95
at home on my machine (I can boot into any one of OS/2, DOS, or Win95,) but
that's for work.
"The system I intend to buy is a Pentium. My experience (almost two months
worth) says that is plenty enough CPU for NT 3.5."
Don't buy the rest of the system short. You'll need fast controllers and video
adapters too. I ran NT 3.1 and 3.5 on a dual pentium 90 for a couple of
months, but I still wasn't impressed with the speed. (not to mention there were
timing problems with one ofthe peripherals!)
"Given Micros**t's design history, no doubt the next version of NT will just
barely plug along on a P6."
Probably so. 🙁 I'm not really against NT, it's just got to get better for me
to want to run it.
Bob Comer — Cheyenne, WY USA
Team OS/2
Robert,
>My NT box is a 486-33 w/ 16 MB RAM.
"You must be more patient than I am, I wouldn't even consider running NT with
less than 24M." "I ran NT 3.1 and 3.5 on a dual pentium 90 for a couple of
months, but I still wasn't impressed with the speed."
I would have to admit that I apparently am more patient than you are.<g>
"Don't buy the rest of the system short. You'll need fast controllers and
video adapters too."
I know and fully intend to keep that in mind; but thanks for the reminder.
"You really ought to give OS/2 a fair chance before you totally deny its
chances in the marketplace."
1. You missed or forgot an earlier message where I said that my company is
already a Windows shop. We have very little OS/2 and are phasing that out. So,
for work purposes, even if IBM sells zillions of copies of OS/2 (*** and I hope
they do ***), it wouldn't be relevant to me. I have gotten very good in
navigating my Amiga. In my 10,000-PC, 15,000-employee company, I have the only
Amiga still in service (there are about six machines in Louisiana gathering
dust).Becoming an expert in OS/2 would put me in that same position again.
2. The IBM personnel I talk to cannot give any vision of why I should bother
with OS/2 other than it's theirs and it will keep a couple hundred bucks out of
Bill Gates' pocket (a laudible goal). As an Amiga user, I know from experience
that anything other than Micros**t's OS is an island. OK, islands can be cool.
But you should have a GOOD REASON to live on an island instead of the mainland.
Mac and Amiga owners already understand that. Even if Commodore could never
articulate why the Amiga was important, their customers didn't suffer from this
affliction. So life on the Amiga and Mac islands was easily justified. When I
ask IBM sales people why I should live on the OS/2 (and especially their
PowerPC) island, I get a blank stare followed by the long version of "it's our
new stuff." Bzzzzzt! Wrong answer.
I *hope* IBM succeeds with its new products, including OS/2. I am not one of
those people who defines "innovation" as lockstep compatibility. But I really
don't believe they are going to succeed with it. And I doubt their long-term
committment to it. From where I sit, there is too much of "a little too little,
a little too late" to OS/2.
Tab Trepagnier
Cruising on AutoPilot from Beaumont, Texas
"1. You missed or forgot an earlier message where I said that my company is
already a Windows shop. We have very little OS/2 and are phasing that out. So,
for work purposes, even if IBM sells zillions of copies of OS/2 (*** and I hope
they do ***), it wouldn't be relevant to me."
I was mainly just reacting to your condemnation of OS/2 in general, rather than
you specifically. Your basing your OS/2 opinions on just your company, and
there are others out there. Our company is doing the opposite, we're phasing
out Windows and going to OS/2.
I wouldn't have bothered post if you hadn't said that OS/2 was dead. 🙂
" The IBM personnel I talk to cannot give any vision of why I should bother
with OS/2 other than it's theirs and it will keep a couple hundred bucks out of
Bill Gates' pocket (a laudible goal)."
Then you obviously have bad salesmen, or you weren't really listening to them.
I have plenty of reasons to use OS/2, if you want to hear them, I'll be happy
to tell.
"And I doubt their long-term committment to it."
That's what a lot of people say, but I can assure you, it's far to important a
product for IBM to let it slide.
"From where I sit, there is too much of "a little too little, a little too
late" to OS/2."
I could say the very same thing about NT.
Bob Comer — Cheyenne, WY USA
Team OS/2
>>I have plenty of reasons to use OS/2, if you want to hear them, I'll be happy
to tell.<<
Please do, I *am* interested.
Bart Van Bockstaele at 100574.2352@compuserve.com
… On AutoPilot and Amiga all the way from Belgium …
I'll work something and post it a bit later. 🙂
Bob Comer — Cheyenne, WY USA
Team OS/2
Thanks,
I really *am* interested. For me the Amiga is the best, even now, but
I'll change platforms *immediately* if someone proves to me I am
wrong. The *only* reason I remain with the Amiga is that I am not
able to find something even close. I am not prepared to pay more
money for less. *AND* my deontology prevents me from suggesting a
different platform to my clients *unless* I am sure to have something
better to offer. My clients are business users, so they can't afford
adventures in the style of peecees and windows. They need a reliable
platform, not a peecee (until now that is)
"I really *am* interested. For me the Amiga is the best, even now, but I'll
change platforms *immediately* if someone proves to me I am wrong."
Well, I can't really prove that OS/2 is the best for you, but it certainly is
the closest of any of the PC OS's.
I still like my Amiga and use it a lot, but my PC and OS/2 has taken over all
of the important, business-like, functions. I still use Autopilot, but that's
because it's better than anything available on the PC.
Bob Comer — Cheyenne, WY USA
Team OS/2
I'll not bore you with the IBM party line on OS/2, as you probably have already
seen it. I'll just say what OS/2 does for me. (Of course, some of what it does
for me IS the IBM party line…)
OS/2 communications:
Finally, the PC platform can do non-dedicated comunications because of OS/2. I
can have multiple serial ports going at full speed at the same time. For
instance, I can be downloading from a BBS, like Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy, or
any of the others at 14.4 Kbaud, and at the same time, I can be transfering a
backup file from my Amiga 1200 at 38.4 Kbaud with only a very slight loss of
speed on my OS/2 PC, so I can be doing something else like running a simple
game or doing some wordprocessing.
OS/2 also has some VERY nice programs for communications with mainframes!
No Autopilot for OS/2 yet. (Steve, would you allow a port to be done on
Autopilot, nudge, nudge. I've been itching to get into the OS/2 shareware
market.)
OS/2 stability:
OS/2 is an extremely stable platform. SInce Windows programs are so buggy,
running Windows 3.1, they crash a lot and when that happens, you usually have
to reboot the PC. Not true with OS/2. For one thing, Windows programs crash
less due to better memory handling, and if a Windows program should crash or
lock-up under OS/2, you can just get rid of it and continue on with whatever
else you might be doing.
Also, if you have a pair of Windows programs that just wont run together, i.e.,
they crash each other, (it happens a lot, unfortunately,) you can run them in
separate sessions. This way they can't crash each other, so they run just
fine, at the same time, under OS/2.
DOS programs run extremely well under OS/2, but if they do crash, it doesn't
crash the whole machine. I can also run DOS programs under OS/2 that have no
hope of running under Windows due to memory constraints.
NT just plain can't run a lot of DOS programs due to hardware banging, but
OS/2's virtual drivers don't seem to have a problem with them. For instance, I
have a Postscript plotting program that just plain wont work under NT because
it uses a dongle, and NT does not support DOS enough for it to see the dongle.
(granted, dongles aren't a good idea, but this is just an exaample of something
running under OS/2, that wont run under NT.) This same program wont run under
Windows either, because it needs to much free low-RAM.
Finally, I have a PC OS that I don't have to reboot more often than my Amiga.
On average, if I'm not testing something on the Amiga, I reboot everyfew days.
On the PC, I reboot once every couple of weeks. (Hardware testing is about the
only thing that forces me to reboot OS/2 a lot, though I have found some OS/2
native programs that can cause a crash every once in awhile.)
OS/2 programming:
I can program for any one of three platforms in OS/2. (DOS, Windows, and native
OS/2)
OS/2 also has REXX, and since I got used to prototyping small stuff in AREXX on
the Amiga, I don't lose that ability in OS/2. A lot of my old AMiga AREXX code
will run under OS/2 with minor changes.
Speaking of REXX, :), OS/2 developers are starting to develop programs that
actually use REXX ports, just like what we have on the Amiga. That makes for
far better scripting and IPC across the whole platform. (just lie what we have
on the Amiga.)
OS/2's clipboard:
OS/2 has a far better implementation of the "clipboard" cancept than the Amiga,
I can cut and paste between almost any application, whether they have specific
code to do it or not. It can be handled at the OS level or at the application
level.
I can also use OLE between Windows prgrams, just like Windows and NT, but OS/2
is evolving in another direction with OpenDoc. You can think of it as a
superset and better implemented OLE. (When all of OpenDoc comes to OS/2 in the
next version, OpenDoc will be able to handle OLE and OpenDoc objects in any
application, regardless if it's a Win app or native. (i.e., you be able to
"OLE" cut and past from a Windows application into an OS/2 application…
Games: 🙂
OS/2 runs many DOS games that just don't run under Windows, Win95, or NT due to
one constraint or another. Also, it can multitask while your playing a game.
I can be playing a game of Mortal Kombat II in a full screen DOS session, while
I have a compile or a download going in another. NT could do this too, if the
game runs in the first place. Win95 can't do it with any reliability. (MKII
doesn't even run under Win95 🙁 )
Faxing:
OS/2 V3 comes with a very nice Fax program that can fax from any application,
regardless if it's DOS, Windows, or OS/2. It runs a bit like GPFax on the
Amiga, but the interface is a bit cleaner. This fax program works far better
for me than anything under Windows, and NT doesn't really have anything
comparable.
That's about all I can think of for now, but I'll keep thinking.
Bob Comer — Cheyenne, WY USA
Team OS/2
>>OS/2 has a far better implementation of the "clipboard" cancept than the
Amiga, I can cut and paste between almost any application, whether they have
specific code to do it or not. It can be handled at the OS level or at the
application level.<<
That is something I really waited for!
>>I can also use OLE between Windows prgrams, <<
I *never* saw OLE really work. For me OLE is something of the tauromachie
field.
Bob,
I really thank you for the info. It sounds to me like if I have to look into
OS/2 a bit closer. I must say that I am biased against it because I saw a
*extremely* bad demo at one of Belgium's major banks: the Kredietbank. At that
time (about two months ago) it wasn't even able to replace an Amiga 125
(125=500/4)!
If you can tell me more I'll be *very* thankful.
Bart Van Bockstaele at 100574.2352@compuserve.com
… On AutoPilot and Amiga all the way from Belgium …
"I *never* saw OLE really work. For me OLE is something of the tauromachie
field."
Well, OLE is a good idea, and maybe when OpenDoc is fully implemented, it'll
actually be fast enough to use. (it's pretty slow under any OS right now.)
"I really thank you for the info. It sounds to me like if I have to look into
OS/2 a bit closer. I must say that I am biased against it because I saw a
*extremely* bad demo at one of Belgium's major banks: the Kredietbank. At that
time (about two months ago) it wasn't even able to replace an Amiga 125
(125=500/4)!"
Your welcome!
Regarding your bad experience, I can understand how it happened, OS/2 (or any
of the PC OS's) is harder to set up than the Amiga, and if it's not not set up
properly, it can be a real dog. It wasn't easy for me to begin with, but it
was definitely worth it!
"If you can tell me more I'll be *very* thankful."
What would you like to know?
Bob Comer — Cheyenne, WY USA
Team OS/2