On another note, please consider implementing a simple search engine or index. Several times in the last month I've needed to locate a past article for friends and had to go through issue looking for them.
Thanks Again!
In general, I agree with your editorial. On the point that advertising to the general public does not do any good, I disagree. In my position as president of the local users group and a member of Team OS/2, I have spoken to many people. Mentioning OS/2, the responses have split into three general camps: 'Whats That?'; 'OS/2 Is DEAD, IBM doesn't even support it anymore!'; and 'We used to use it, but management decided W95 is the future'. ALL of these speak to the lack of advertising by IBM. (I try to forget the fiasco of 'It's A WARPED WORLD' and the accompanying techno-geek ads...)
Every Olympic sponsor is pushing their product's involment and how it is 'critical' to the games. I've only seen one ad from IBM, and it was just a basic IBM name recognition ad. Where's the 'When you need reliability, you need OS/2' type ads? You DON'T have to get technical. Look at the MS ads. No technical info there, just a no brainer ad that KEEPS THE NAME IN FRONT OF THE PEOPLE.
In this age of information overload, if you don't remind people constantly of something, it will lose any sense of importance and will soon FADE AWAY and disappear. If SOMEONE doesn't do something, I fear this will become OS/2's fate as well.
My daughter (13) saw Warp on her brother's machine and decided she wants it on the machine I'm building for her. She is not impressed with PCs, and does not revere them with the proper attitude us true believers do. She does like the color schemes and desktops, Works appeals to her, as does the PIM, and other applets that relate to time and space and appointments. She is definitely not a geek, yet it appeals to her very much.
Bottom line -- I agree with the editorial. Until Warp is easy to use and install, the market of computer users (as differentiated from us geeks) will pass it by. On the other hand, don't sell Warp short yet, it does have a visual appeal that is compelling. It also has a calender, phonebook, appointment book, and to do list that are tied together in a manner that is very impressive to the initiate.
Regarding Trevor's Rant on simplification:
I hear you brother! Nothing turns off a computer user more than a bunch of incoherent technobable. Especially in a business setting, the last thing a busy person needs is to have a computer problem that he/she cannot take care of ASAP. Time IS money in a business and downtime is the worst kind of waste. I hope the change in scenery will make a difference in how OS/2 creators see what needs to be done.
Your most obedient and humble servant,
I'm pretty sure I corrected the problem, simply by going into "Slattach.exe" settings notebook, sessions settings and turning off the default "close window on exit" check box.
Anyway, I then created a program object for it under OS/2, and set it off. It played surprisingly well, and best of all, it gave me full sound, even digital FX. I was very impressed by this, and although Ctrl+Esc couldn't get me back to the desktop for some reason, it made a good impression. Then I exited, the screen went black and... it stayed that way. Oh well, I thought - these things happen. Go for the reset button, and all will be well.
Or so I thought, at least until I rebooted and the PM started up. Suddenly I get a message box. It tells me, in effect, that I have a knackered OS2.INI file and it can't find the desktop, and would I like an OS/2 window? No, I want my desktop back, actually. So, I reboot again, and choose an archive from earlier in the evening, before I began.
Well, I got the desktop back, but at a price. It seems all is not still well, as a number of objects have "broken links", have lost icons, and so on. Sadly I have no backups of the *.INI files (never worked out how to copy them), so unless the e-Zine article on restoring desktops can help, I may have a long repair task ahead.
I don't know whether this was caused by my error, Quake, bad luck or combinations thereof, but I would warn anyone thinking of trying Quake under OS/2 to be most careful, and at least to have good backups of essential files before they jump in. I don't know if any long-term damage has been done to my OS/2 setup, but I'd say I've learned the hard way about the consequences of not doing so.
BTW, the Quake program object should have DPMI memory of 8Mb, and the AUTOEXEC.BAT needs the BLASTER variable set, and it should run fine. And any advice will be much appreciated...
Anyway, your help was just what was needed, and it's finally a pleasure to be about to monitor Usenet without having Webex's newsreader stop my system dead, or try to figure out what window I should be looking for in Neologic, or deciding whether to download and install the trial version of Postroad, which I never bought because it also seemed to waste a lot of time...
Copyright © 1996 - Falcon Networking