I would, however, like to address two points. The first, about OS/2 Warp's sales of one million licenses in December 1995: I first heard about this on January 23, 1996. My "Road Kill" editorial was written far earlier: According to my tracking system, "Perspectives" was last edited on January 8, the magazine was sent to film output on January 11, and was being printed around January 26. I noted that excellent sales number, as well as many other positive factors about OS/2's health, in April's editorial, "Life and Hope."
About my comments about Athena Design Inc' s closing: Rarely have I so pleased to be wrong! Obviously, the company didn't close, and is currently open for business. But in case you are wondering, our story was based on information provided by company representatives in late December 1995; only much later did we realize that we were provided inaccurate information.
Thanks for the opportunity to set the record straight,
Alan Zeichick
Editor-in-Chief
OS/2 Magazine
To compare the impact of Describe's failure with that of WordPerfect lacks consideration of two issues: First, WordPerfect's problems did not hurt any Windows user because there are many alternative products. The selection for OS/2 word processors is very limited at this point. Second, WordPerfect for windows went through a long development from a mediocre version 5 to the bug-ridden version 6 and strong competition from competitive software in Microsoft's MSOffice suite. There was no such competition for Decsribe.
Shareware authors need a steady flow of income - agreed. I'd register a number of apps if it wasn't pain in the butt to do so. Is there something we've missed? You bet! What OS/2 community NEEDS is secure credit card transactions.
Petri Taimisto
Its big, ain't all that pretty, and not overwelmed with cute little features and options (our '74 scout had air conditioning, & AM radio), but, if you wanted to go some where, nothing short of a mac truck could stop you.
(a) Some kind of review of UltiMail. I know many readers have already had experience of it, and not many sound positive, but I'd like some idea of why it's bad (or not) and what it actually can do. In your recent FTP round-up there was a brief word for FTP-PM - one for UltiMail would've been the icing on the cake here.
(b) What about a review of Lotus cc:Mail? Assuming there is an OS/2 version, I'd be most interested as I use cc:Mail for Windows :-( at work and get on really well with it. Would it be outside my price range? (I hear Merlin may come with cc:Mail anyway - who knows?)
Please when doing software reviews, check to see what the newest version is... it almost reminds me of MS versus other companies... "we have bla 95 brand new, and we'll test against this 2 year old beta"........
For the record, the SIQ fix is responsible for focus problems that afflict about half the users who install it with various application mixes. This is one of the most frequent complaint topics in OS/2 support forums on CIS.
The Second Coming of OS/2 [--Top--]
A car analogy... The one that keeps popping into my mind is the old International Scout II.
e-mail Reviews [--Top--]
Chris Williams's review of the MR2ICE mail reader omitted mention of my favorite feature: the author's incredible responsiveness to readers. Nick Knight releases weekly updates of the beta, usually on Mondays. He also maintains a mailing list (mr2ice.list@secant.com -- putting "subscribe" in the subject field will get you on it) for questions and suggestions, to which he responds with blazing speed. I posted a complaint about a new feature in the latest version (.99v) at 9 am this morning; he responded within half an hour. I have seen new features show up in the weekly beta a few days after they were suggested.
Software designers could learn a lot from this guy. Too many have the habit of blaming customers for features that don't work the way the user wants or expects. Knight seeks out his customers, listens to them, and responds promptly and effectively.
I read your round-up of PM e-mail clients with great interest, as I hope to set up a home Internet connection in the next month or two. All the apps reviewed sound pretty nifty, especially PMMail, and it's good to see they support attached files. A couple of extras I would've liked:
- You're right Tim. We should have included Ultimail as a sort of baseline so all readers could judge against it. And the ommission of cc:Mail was a mistake we will try to correct in the future. Thanks.
While going through your reviews of e-mail clients, generally finding it well done and rounded, a large discrepancy crossed my eyes. With mr/2 ice, and Pmmail you tested and rated the most recent and newest available version, yet with post road mailer, you reviewed 1.03a, 1.05d is the current version, and it has many new features that the old version(1.03a) did not, some of the questions that the author had (dislikes?) were resolved in 1.05...
- A valid point, but we decided to go ahead with PRM v1.03a because InnoVal could not assure us that v1.05 would be available to the general public during the month of April. In fact this looks to be the case so we feel justified in our decision. Rest assured, we will feature a complete review of PRM as soon as it finishes its beta period (or in the month that it will finish).
SIQ Fix [--Top--]
I was disappointed to see that the article on the SIQ "fix" in FP17 didn't mention that it's buggy, and that IBM does _not_ recommend users install FP17 unless they're trying to get into Opendoc at an early stage.
WPS for Windows [--Top--]
The article on the WPS for Windows recommended installing all Windows software before WPS4W so that the setups wouldn't fail. I've found that it's sufficient to have Program Manager running (it doesn't have to be the shell) when installing a new program to prevent hang-ups when the program creates its folder and icons.
Odds and Ends [--Top--]
[Regarding Kevin Linfield's Favourite OS/2 Freeware]
Thank You,
I dl'd CDinabox, iLink, and magcom today. The only one I haven't tried yet is magcom (that's next). I am impressed with all so far. Good freeware is hard to find. You are providing a necessary service. Keep up the good work.
Copyright © 1996 - Falcon Networking