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Feedback from Issue #4

Editorial [--Top--]

I'm a long time OS/2 fan and user but I wonder if you can find out how many of IBM's 1 million Dec95 sales were from select-a-system preloads.

For example, in our office we order a lot of Thinkpads every year (500-1000). Each one comes with Select-A-System (Win3.1 plus Warp for Windows). Almost everyone deletes OS/2 and just uses Windows 3.1. The OS/2 users, delete Warp for Windows, license Warp Connect and reinstall with HPFS partitions.

I fear that IBM is grossly overstating their actual Warp users whereas a Win95 preload is a Win95 user.

I hope I'm wrong.

Eric Kintzer


- We also hope you're wrong. It's probably true that IBM is overstating their sales figures by counting select-a-system preloads, but the same is certainly true with Windows 95. I sincerely doubt, with all the scuttlebut about returns and the fact that Win95 isn't exactly stellar on an 8 meg system, that, "a Win95 preload is a Win95 user." IBM is probably just using the same "statistical methods" as Microsoft has been for a long time.
Eric raises a valid point about the hype in the computer business. But let me assure him and others that a win95 preload is definitely NOT a win 95 user.

I work in a pretty die hard MS shop. We buy Gateway computers which of course come with win95. Step 1 in setting these up is to reformat the disk and install WFW 3.11. Not that we use the WFW, it's just the least buggy version.

The other developers at the shop have removed the 95 from their home machines too. Two of them are trying NT, and I take great pleasure when they come in and rave about being able to do two things at once. Of course, I say, That's what I've been doing for the last four years!

Keith Weitzel


I think your editorial/rant in issue 4 hit the nail straight on. There is another area that we could persue that will also help. You mentioned it briefly, but it is an area that needs work; retailer support.

Not long ago, I went into my local CompUSA to get a copy of the Describe Voyager CD. I had called in advance and was told they had 5 copies. When I arrived at the store later that day, none were on the shelf! I was both excited and disappointed; excited as maybe it was selling well (good for OS/2 and Describe) and disappointed as now I would have to mail order it and wait.

To be sure what the situation was, I stopped a sales clerk and inquired on the availability of the CD set. He led me back to the OS/2 application area to see what I had already learned, none there. But he goes back to the stock room and brings out a plain white box and hands it to me and walks away! Looking the box over, I see a label on the end that indicates it is what I had asked for. I open the box to be sure that all is there and it is. I buy it.

I was back in the store the other day looking for a copy of Object Desktop. I had not called in advance this time. OD was not there but about 8 copies of the Describe Voyager CD set were. However, they were in the plain white box with one of them set so you could read the label to see what it was. How inviting, huh? I commented on this to the customer service person who seemed interested and friendly. I have not been back yet to see if they acted upon my comment. I will, though, to be sure that it (Describe Voyager CD) and us (OS/2 fans) get the proper support from this retailer.

Rick Curry


Trevor's Rant [--Top--]

I read Trevor's "Rant" regarding minimum memory requirements and using Avarice Preview as an example of too low a requirement and felt that it was an unfair example.

Technically, Avarice Preview will run on a 386sx-16 with 4 megs of ram. We've even had emails from users who have 386's with 6 megs of ram who bought Avarice and play it but almost didn't because they didn't think they could.

If anything, Stardock and CSS should be criticized for OVER estimating the minimum memory requirements since we said you need a 486DX with 8 megs of ram to play it even though it plays on a much less powerful system.

I will be the first to say that I don't think it would be very much fun on a system with less than 8 megs of ram but that is my opinion. I'll go so far as to say that I personally don't recommend serious work to be done on a machine with less than 20 megs of ram but that, like Trevor's column, is just my opinion and has no imperical evidence to support it.

Trevor Smith would have software companies have vaguely defined minimum requirements based on someone's personal opinion. I have demonstrated Avarice Preview many times on my ThinkPad (486DX2-75) with 8 megs of ram without a problem.

Another issue that comes up is the OS/2 system in question. With all the memory using additions that users can place on their system, the performance of an OS/2 product can be radically different from system to system. A person trying to run a network, have multimedia support, and using IBM Works may find OS/2 to be "unusable" at 16 megs let alone 8 megs.

The software world is much more complex in the realm of 32bit OSs like OS/2 Warp. Avarice is not a DOS game where the software manufacturer knows that at most the users are using up maybe 100K in TSR's and device drivers. Avarice Preview is quite playable on an 8 meg system provided that the user takes into account that they are running the lowest common denominator and will likely have to adjust their settings for that.

I'll be the first to agree with the review of Avarice also found in the same issue that we shouldn't have made the high resolution graphics the default since that setting is only playable to a small segment of users (even my machine isn't set up to run that very fast). But given Avarice's vast flexibility in terms of settings (from high res 24bit JPEG graphics to low resolution black and white bitmaps), Avarice is indeed quite playable on the minimum configuration. But not surprisingly, the user may be required to set up Avarice Preview to reflect the system. Even at its lowest resolutions, its graphics still go far beyond most DOS/Windows games in clarity and graphics quality.

Most users I know believe that OS/2 shouldn't be run on a system with less than 8 megs. Yet, if IBM had followed Trevor's advice there would literally be millions of users who never would benefited from the power of OS/2.

Sincerely,

Brad Wardell
Stardock Systems, Inc.


- First of all, my monthly Rant column is, as Brad says, my opinion only. Secondly, I hope everyone realizes that I didn't mean to unfairly punish Avarice Preview; it was just an example of my particular subject and possibly the most recent example so it was the obvious choice to mention.

I certainly wouldn't want software companies to list, "vaguely defined minimum requirements based on someone's personal opinion." What I would like them to do is print specificly defined recommended requirements based on their intimate knowledge of their own products. I would like a recommendation on how much memory a user needs to run the application without swapping at every mouse click. Just let us know how much RAM the application takes up on its own--we can adjust for the other utilities/applications we have installed on our systems.


And then, of course, there's the OPPOSITE problem: 'minimum' requirements that are ten times higher than actually needed. This isn't so prominent in the business software arena, but games (especially DOS games) almost always have their requirements exaggerated. (Personally, I think this is because they expect the game to be run under Windows95, where it WILL have those requirements.) The first example that comes to mind is The Need For Speed, an excellent racing sim; it's advertised as requiring 8 megs of RAM and a DX2/66. Now, it's not lying about the RAM requirement, but it runs extremely well on a DX/33 (from either an OS/2 Penalty Box or a pure DOS boot), and if you dropped to minimum quality (which is blocky, but still tolerable) I bet it'd run on a 486SX/25 or a fast 386. (TNFS has autostart.exe on the CD, which would seem to support my theory that the ridiculous 'requirements' are for running it are assuming Win95.)

Lief Clennon


Paying Our Way [--Top--]

Regarding Kel Brown's column in issue 4, this has to be the most sane and best balanced article I've seen on OS/2 apps and support for apps for other platforms in OS/2.

Windows and DOS compatibilty was a big issue for me when I first made the move to OS2. I still have Excel 4.0 and WinWord 2.0 on the system because my father uses these 2 apps at work and there are no native OS/2 apps which will currently read/write these file formats. Once this situation is remedied I'll be able to move completely to native OS/2 apps (provided the functionality and quality of the apps are comparable of course).

May this happen soon and may the ISV's supporting OS/2 prosper.

Rod


the REXX Files [--Top--]

I just thought you would like to know some of the major applications that I have implemented in Rexx here at Taco Bell. These three applications are all gateways. One for Mainframe Printing, one for Mainframe file transfer and the last is a facility to exchange mail between Microsoft Mail and an in-house written mail system system running in each of our restaurants. All three 'gateways' run on OS/2. The File Transfer and the Printing gateways connect to mainframe Rexx (MVS and VM). The Mail Gateway uses FFAPI for the MS Mail connection and FTP for the restaurant connection.

John Morrison


America Online review [--Top--]

I would just like to make a short comment about America On-Line. While others may dismiss it for their own reasons (why should I pay for this and that and so on....), I have just one reason to not even try it: the last time I checked, they charge all user outside the 48 states a 10 cent per minute surcharge. This surcharge applies even during the "free" trial period. Meanwhile, I can call a local number for Compuserve in a large number of Canadian cities. I'm not sure what the other companies' policies are for Canadian (and other non-48 state customers), but AOL's policy is enough to keep me away from them.

Neil DeBoni


- This is something that concerns us too since we are also Canada. While America Online may now be the largest commercial on-line service in the world with over 4.5 million members, they are sadly lacking in future planning to still be charging this kind of surcharge for their Canadian customers. For the same reason as you, Neil, we won't be maintaining an AOL membership.

GEnie review [--Top--]

GEnie has been sold and the price structure has changed.

ebeatty@gate.net


FM/2 review [--Top--]

While I felt that Mr. Atchue's review was very fair and knowledgable, there are a couple of points I'd like to address.

First, the review gives the impression that FM/2's main window consists of a drive tree and one directory display--in fact, you can open as many directory windows as you like in FM/2, and FM/2 even provides comparison selections that can select files based on how they compare to other opened directory windows.

Second, the author mildly chides FM/2 for not providing a boot disk maker, but mentions that such is built into OS/2 itself. :-)

Please convey my thanks to Mr. Atchue for an excellent review (IMHO).

Mark Kimes, author of FM/2


Thank you!!

I do not think FM/2 should provide a boot disk simply as a feature. The boot disk I mentioned would likely be a utility disk, booting only being incedental to your cause... which would be mainly defragging and maintenence to locked disks. This would be especially helpful for novice users and of course the lazy feature hungry people (like myself).

Steven N Atchue


Confessions of a British Warp User [--Top--]

This is a quick message for everyone who contacted me over my article in e-Zine! No. 4, about my experiences as an OS/2 user in Britain. To date I've received almost thirty e-mails from folk all over the world (mostly from the US and Canada, but also from Eire, the UK and even Singapore), and would just like to take this opportunity to say a huge thank-you to you all.

I probably deserved a few letters telling me to stop moaning, which explains why I was so thrilled not to get any! It's a great credit to the OS/2 Net community out there that I didn't receive one single 'flame' for my comments, and rest assured you've cheered me up no end. (Incidentally, for those wondering about my comment asking where the 400-page manual went, I ordered my copy of Warp directly from IBM, through a special student offer - presumably lack of full documentation was a casualty of the cut price!)

I apologise if I gave the impression that British OS/2 users have a tougher time than any other parts of the world, and my thanks to those from rural parts of the States, Ireland and elsewhere who passed on their experiences of how their sole link with other OS/2 users depends on the modem cable. I'm especially grateful to the other British users who e-mailed me, and I'll soon be following up some of the connections (user groups, BBSs, etc.) which they cited.

Special thanks, too, to those who addressed my technical queries. I've already implemented some of them (I never realised the Warp CD player had autoplay), and am working on others. For all those who pointed out that 8Mb makes for a slow OS/2 system... well, I suppose I'm asking for trouble, running MMPM/2, the WPS and Object Desktop at the same time, before I even get to any apps :-) Thankfully, I hope to upgrade my whole PC in the next month or so (definitely to a 16Mb one, and a P75 if I can afford it), so hopefully the days of sounds lagging behind and endless disk swapping are numbered...

So, thank you all again very, very much for all your messages of support, which have been a huge encouragement. I'm afraid I can't reply to you all individually, but I hope this message expresses how much I appreciate your comments. And if I ever get my own home page mounted, I'll try and get e-Zine! to let you know :-)

Tim Walker


...and some odds and ends [--Top--]

After reading all the issues to date, I've noticed that it seems that there are always 2 rants, and only 1 rave. Now, a 2:1 bad/good ratio doesn't exactly bode well for those investigating OS/2. I realize (having read the articles) that the rants sometimes don't focus on OS/2 specifically (the Netscape rant comes to mind) but I worry about the perception this is giving. Surely, with a great product like OS/2, it is possible to find more things to rave about than rant? It would be nice to see another "rave" spot open up, and promote more about OS/2 that deserves the recognition.

Craig Pommer


OS/2 advocates go too far! What's that you say? There is no "too far" when it comes to advocating OS/2? But there is! What I am talking about, is the Internet top 100 games list... Galactic Civilizations (for those who haven't paid attention) was voted top game of 1995. And I think this is an incredible crime. I will explain, with a little help from your imagination. Imagine you just got home from the store, with a brand new game. It's called "Galactik Civilizations". Eagerly you load it up, and start to play. Wow, look at the options you can set! And look at the graphics, and sound! You start to play, and get intrigued by the intense micro-management, and marvel at the interactive combat. You glance back at the box that started this love afair, only to read "MS-DOS Version". "What??" you say! "This game is for DOS? Boy does it suck! The graphics are poor, the sound is bad, who wants to micro-manage and where is my interactive combat??"

Does this situation sound far fetched to you? Perhaps a little. But the fact of the matter is, by todays (or, say, Galactic Civilizations days) DOS standards, GalCiv was NOT a superb product. It would NOT be at the top of the Internet top 100 games, and would NOT have been voted as the best game of 1995.

And this leads me back to my point. Galactic Civilizations was so voted because it was an -OS/2- game. And I think that is wrong. OS/2 users have turned something that was meant to fairly rank computer games into a "My OS is better than your OS" contest. I would not be surprised (although I would like to think I'm wrong) that people were enticed into voting for the game even if they'd never actually played it.

Now, if you got the idea from this that I don't like Galactic Civilizations, or that I am trying to put down Stardock Systems in ANY way, you are wrong. I admire the work they are doing, and hope they keep it up! I purposefully dramatized on some of my perceived flaws with the game to make my point. And that point is, that people need to think twice about whether or not they'd think would be as good if it didn't have a "/2" on the end.

Craig Pommer


Craig, I agree with some of what you say. Certainly, while Galactic Civilizations was a heck of a game, I do not feel that it deserved Game of the Year, and perhaps you are right that this has become merely an issue of operating systems. However, try to look at it from another standpoint. Imagine that the Macintosh suddenly gets a killer game -- not a Game of the Year, but a good one nonetheless. Macintosh people are very enthusiastic about the game, because they feel it is really the only game for the Macintosh worth playing. They recognize that it may not be quite up to DOS gaming standards, but it is still a very good game and the best one that they can play. To show their support for the game, the company that makes it (one of the few companies that supports the Macintosh), and the Macintosh in general, they go to Internet PC gaming and vote. It turns out, as this is really the only Macintosh game anybody likes, that virtually every Mac user who owns it votes for it, and it does much better in the contest than one would expect. As there are so many DOS games to choose from, the DOS users' votes are spread among a number of different games, while the Macintosh users' votes are all concentrated on this one game. And so the Macintosh game captures the Game of the Year award, despite the fact that some of the DOS games are arguably better.

Replace "Macintosh" with "OS/2" and let the killer game in question be Galactic Civilizations, and you have the situation you are up in arms about. As I said, it might be simply an issue of operating systems, but I do not think it is. I think it is just a misrepresentation caused by the fact that most OS/2 users do not use DOS games, and hence would instead vote for an OS/2 game. Just as I wouldn't vote for a Macintosh game, neither would I vote for a DOS game -- and thus what we are left with is Galactic Civilizations.

Ethan Royael Nicholas


I have one suggestion - what do you think of having a section that contains all of the links that are in the text of the articles. At times when I am reading the articles, I don't wish to jump to the link immediately - but I don't necessarily want to review the entire e-zine to find these links later.

Gary A. Bartlett


- What do the rest of you think? Is this a good idea?

Get out your favourite mailer or use this link to send us your thoughts!

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