OSNews

Ummm sorry folks, and particularly Eugenia...

I wasn't being critical of the article Eugenia wrote - indeed I thought it was well balanced, and I have been intrigued to find out that part of the deal between IBM and M$ seems to have been the removal of competition from M$ on the basis of user licence cost of M$ apps to IBM.

Now that DOES make much more sense in a commercial world than other suggested reasons for scaling down OS/2, although it isn't the way I think/behave.

I just felt some background might be useful, showing that my experience was you need more than one go to install OS/2 has often been the case. But so most other OS's too.

I have actually tried 3 versions of BeOS, two of QNX and one of WinLinux - and a couple of real Linux. None of them worked on my machines for various reasons, some didn't work at all, some only partly.

So, for stability reasons I could be called an OS/2 afficionado - but not a fanatic - because I've looked around, and come back to something I know will work - at my age I don't need to learn a whole new system.

There's an old engineering principle... "When it ain't broke, don't fix it".

That applied when I used to tune those marvellously simple SU carbies (that nobody else would touch) on hotted up cars in the UK in the 50s and early 60s. It applies equally to 'puters too in this day and age.

OS/2 has always needed an install to a default VGA 640x480 screen first up. It isn't hard - if you have the drivers - to then use the CD to install your obscure video card. Or even install them from a floppy.

While different, look at the Safe Mode concept introduced by M$ for 95 onwards, and the NT boot loader option to boot to VGA - you eliminate many conflict problems that way.

The NT loader choice was, of course, copied from the ability in OS/2 Warp to do exactly the same on boot.

Something I found with Warp 4 was it defaulted to internet from a LAN which I didnt have... but there was the ability (from memory) to add a dialup afterwards. Six years later, last week, my wife's brand new notebook preloaded with WinME was also... so this looks normal to me.

Another point,if I may... If config files (like config.sys which can edited in a text editor) are regarded as outdated, may I ask why they have to be seen as such? If you have the info there that can be edited in an ascii editor, isn't it better than the cumbersome registry key statements in 95/98 et seq? Certainly it's easier to restore if you make a mistake, you boot from DOS on a floppy and copy the old file back (which we always save first, don't we?)

Anyway, I don't wish to hog the posts here. The last one I made was horrendously long. Sorry for that.

I found the original article truly very interesting, and reading past where I disagreed - we can disagree and still get along well - and also found it highly informative. While the new version looks like maybe more work needs to be done on it, I'm greatly encouraged to read another correspondent here did have success, and likes using it. I for one hope to try it when it comes 15,000 miles across the Pacific Maybe I can buy it as an upgrade to my Warp 4?

Please be encouraged, Eugenia I love your editorial style and your journalistic ability.

Richard