It seems to me that those people still using a 486 could use a little more than a "how to upgrade article", maybe a meeting with a shrink to discuss how their childhood has affected the natural human desire to stay up to date. I think that you could reach a lot more people with upgrade options for people using computers running Pentium 60-100. Most of those machines were purchased right around the time Warp 3 debuted and are starting to show signs of serious aging especially with Warp 4 and VoiceType. These are the people who are most likely to upgrade; 486 users are more likely to purchase new machines.
I have recently started reading OS/2 e-Zine! and I would like to make a suggestion: When doing product reviews, it would be nice to see on the front-page, how the product is rated.
A 5 star rating system would be great. I don't like reading through long reviews of a product that would only get 1 star. It's a waste of time. This rating system would also be great for when you do product comparisons.
Loved the last paragraph of your review--I remember that situation well! Just installed Warp 4.0 Saturday, and though I've only got a 66 MHz 486DX with 20 Megs of memory, I'm going to try out at least the Navigation portion of VoiceType and see how it does...
Thanks for the article.
Yup, I do have DeScribe on my OS/2 Desktop, but I almost never run it. Rarely do even newsletters (retired priest serving small congregation) with graphics. And what do I use -- well, gosh, WordStar 7 for DOS. If most correspondence is letters and the like, there is little use for graphics and instead of a short letter which would create a 20k graphics file, my WS 7 creates a 1 or 2 k file. Don't need bloat, so don't use bloat.
I agree totally with your sentiments on "Pork-Ware". The biggest example that comes to my mind is when my workcenter upgraded from MS Word 2.0 to MS Word 6.0 Word 2.0 did just fine on our 386s and 486s even within 4 Megs under Win3.1 Word 6.0 was pretty much useless in 4megs, and was no speed demon even under 8.
In the OS/2 area, I find that I prefer to use Internet Adventurer for much of my 'net surfing, precisely because of the fact that it requires so few resources of my PC. It seems faster than even Netscape/2. If memory serves, the Zip file for it was just slightly over 1 meg, and the .exe is just 221k. Not bad for a program that has web, news, and IRC built into it.
AAAAAAMEN!!! In the rush to reach the market first, most developers have fallen prey to basic laziness. It takes time to write GOOD efficient code. Unfortunately, nobody wants to take the time to do it right. Most of the new programmers are just college graduates trying to keep there first job.
Maybe you shoud find some good shareware to replace those huge applications available today and let everybody know about it in your column.
I just re-read the announcement about OS/2 magazine's impending termination. It was complete with the usual "ISV's/IBM (pick your favourite) are not supporting/reducing support for OS/2" complaints.
I have been a regular purchaser of the magazine for the past year, and my own observations lead me to the opposite conclusion. The majority of the ads have become noticeably more polished and professional in appearance, and there certainly doesn't seem to have been any reduction in column-inch quantity.
Just coincidentally, there is a full-page ad in the November issue (page 59, if you haven't already seen it..) for a free subscription to their new publication which arrives in January, 1997. The name of this new addition? Windows NT Systems!
I wonder if I just have an overly-suspicious mind, or if there is perhaps more significance in the advertisement than in the announcement. I might be interested in other readers' opinions on this, as might you.
The times my be changing but I'm not.
Although the rates for electronic transactions are about the same as writing a check, the rate for cash transactions is still "0". The banks would love to eliminate cash and be able to charge whatever the market will accept on even the most minor transaction.
Rather than encouraging the banks you should be petitioning to abolish all forms of electronic banking. The banks are getting richer every day because people are willing to pay for a second monetary system. I'm just too cheap to buy into their scheme. It was nontheless a well written and enjoyable article.
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