OS/2 e-Zine! - Object Desktop Professional

[PMMail: Internet Mail Like You've Seen it Before... In Your Dreams]

Object Desktop Professional

- by Alex Bradley

Editor's note: this review originally appeared in slightly different form, in OS/2 Review Magazine. OS/2 Review Magazine is a service for OS/2 user groups world wide.

long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

A year ago, Stardock Systems, best known for creating Galactic Civilizations, released Object Desktop 1.0. It won great praise in the industry and brought cutting edge features to the OS/2 world. Its features included the unique ability to make .ZIP files behave as regular OS/2 folders, a reliable and integrated way of launching programs with the keyboard, virtual Desktops, enhancements to the look and feel of OS/2, and a plethora of other features.

On the downside, Object Desktop 1.0 suffered from numerous performance and compatibility issues due in main to its seamless integration with OS/2. In response, Stardock hired IBM developers who did not want to transfer from Boca Raton, Florida to Austin, Texas. The result was Object Desktop 1.5 (released in May). It not only addressed the performance and stability issues but added many asked-for features.

According to Stardock, Object Desktop 1.5 is still their recommended environment for most OS/2 users and Object Desktop Professional is only for power users and corporate Desktops. I do not know if I agree with Stardock on this point. Stardock believes the US$179 price tag for Object Desktop Professional will put it out of the reach of most OS/2 users. On the subject of cost, this author and Stardock part ways. Maybe $179 is too high for someone using OS/2 as a hobby but most people use OS/2 to increase their productivity and are professionals. A quick tour of the feature set of Object Desktop Professional makes it pretty compelling to those who are not using OS/2 as a hobby or to defy Microsoft. And in fact, it makes it unnecessary to buy so many other products that OS/2 users save a lot of time and money trying to get some of these feature piecemeal.

Let's look at what Object Desktop Professional (ODPro) does.

First Impressions

I installed ODPro with all the features selected. I quickly learned that I should have paid more attention since it installed the ATAPI/IDE tape driver. (Since I have no tape drive at all this is a feature I did not need.) After I rebooted, I came up with the usual Object Desktop look. My system (a 486dx2-66 with 16mb) seemed to perform just as well as before.

Object Security

I first tried to see how good the security was. I password protected (GIF, 1.7K) my word processor folder with Object Security. Sure enough, a little key appeared by the folder and when I double clicked on it, it asked me for my password (GIF, 7K), so far so good. But when I went to a command prompt, I was able to get at the folder from there. The security seems to be mainly to protect power users and IT managers from end users.

Object Viewing

The next thing I tried was the much talked about feature known as Object Viewing. Luckily for me, I have a directory just full of all types of files. To add sauce to my experiment, I took off all the .3 extensions. Instead of my files being called "Budget.xls", "Letter3.doc", "Babe.gif", etc., they just had names like "Budget" or "Letter home from school" or "Cool targa file".

I then double clicked on my files and ODPro viewed them all (GIF, 10.6K) -- every file came up perfectly. My Word7 document not only had the right formatting and fonts, but the embedded graphics worked inside. Not even Star Office's MSWord import filter handles embedded graphics. I went to my "Cool Targa file" and selected the eyeball of the female model. Then I copied it to the clipboard, pasted it into StarWriter and it came up perfectly.

I also played with Object Viewing in conjunction with the Object Navigator in ODPro. The Object Navigator can open up a connected window (GIF, 21K) at the bottom of the screen; double click on a file and the contents are displayed in the "view pane". Most remarkably, the viewing performance is very fast. In less than a second on most documents, correct display of formatting and contents appear in the view pane. If you choose an .EXE or .DLL, ODPro displays their information as well right down to segment offsets, making this program attractive to developers.

On the other hand, Object Viewing did not recognize my Star Writer files. Overall, I salute Stardock for delivering on their promise on the viewing capabilities. It should be noted that there is no product on the market for any OS that I know of that combines such file support with this kind of performance. Quick View on Windows95 tries and fails at what ODPro does (it is very slow compared to ODPro and does not support nearly as many files). When it comes to being able to work with others, ODPro gives OS/2 a real advantage. This makes OS/2 a very attractive client for corporations.

Object Advisor

The next feature I played with was the Object Advisor (GIF, 3.9K). I am not quite certain how to describe this feature. Opening the Object Advisor Trainer and clicking on any icon, opens up a window on the Desktop that describes the function of the object (if an advisor is available). According to the documentation of ODPro, this is in HTML and others can readily create their own advisors.

This brings up the biggest problem I encountered with ODPro. It has a UI deficiency in terms of creating Object Advisors. A user has to right click on the Object Advisor and choose the "Definitions" view that then lets them create an advisor. The Advisor creation mechanism is very well done, however, and I quickly wrote up an Object Advisor for my current applications.

If I used the Worldwide Web, I could have made Advisors that connected to Web sites. Object Advisor is a very exciting and powerful feature. I expect most of the more aggressive OS/2 shareware and freeware authors to begin including an advisor for their apps so that their customers can easily download updates. Stardock has done a real service for OS/2 developers with this feature because it will likely decrease technical support problems for both users and developers. IT managers will also like the Object Advisors because they can create a company wide help system that works with their intranet. This means that IT managers can dynamically change their system help on custom software, create technical support forms, etc. Every large OS/2 site should look carefully at ODPro just because of this feature.

Desktop Backup Advisor

The Desktop Backup Advisor was the next feature to get my attention. Stardock claims it provides two important functions: it can manage multiple Desktops and it can completely repair OS/2 .INI files in the process of doing the aforementioned function.

Being the skeptic I am, I decided to put this to the test. I created three very different Desktops. My original Desktop I backed up and I must comment on how intuitive and pleasant the UI for the Desktop Backup Advisor is. Then I made a Macintosh-like Desktop and backed it up. Finally, I made a Windows95 looking Desktop and backed it up. Next, I restored my original Desktop (this took about 3 minutes to do so I would not recommend doing this every day).

My original Desktop came back and sure enough, my system did seem a bit faster. Those uncluttered .INI files are supposed to bring better speed and stability to OS/2. I do not know about the stability because OS/2 is already very reliable for me but as I type this I am quite sure it is faster. On the downside, some of the objects in my Tab LaunchPad were not restored, however, I was able to add them back quickly enough. I wonder what Stardock's response to this is since it restored everything else on my system perfectly (it seems funny that ODPro can restore a Desktop perfectly except for some icons on Stardock's own object).

Object Inspector

I also tried out the Object Inspector (GIF, 9.3K) feature, quickly. I am not into WPS management so this feature did not interest me until I saw that I could look at and edit the class table. Now this feature is very interesting and I find it peculiar that Stardock is not bragging about this. Object Inspectors, for all intents and purposes, are an OS/2 registry editor. I was able to edit my class table and remove a bunch of old classes that programs had installed. For example, I long ago stopped using IBM Works but was never able to delete it because it said some of its DLLs were in use. With the Object Inspector, I was able to remove those classes and on reboot, deleted the remaining parts of IBM works and my system got a gigantic speed boost (as I type this, I am a very happy man). Your mileage may vary, depending on how much junk you have loaded on your system but I suspect most OS/2 users have a great deal of skeletons in their class table closet.

Object Backup

The last feature I tried out (and there are plenty of other features left) was the Object Backup (GIF, 7K) feature. I do not own a tape drive but thankfully Object Backup supports backing up to floppy (GIF, 12.3K) which most backup programs nowadays do not. I backed up Quake to floppy without a problem and restored it, also without a problem. The compression of Object Backup is not terrifically impressive but it works well.

Other Things

There are lots of features I did not try: from the Object Scheduler (which allows people to have programs run at a given time) to the advanced features of the Object Package.

To put this product into perspective, you get everything in Object Desktop and in addition, reliable and extensive file viewing/file exporting features, backup, security, Desktop management, performance tuning, .INI repairing, Desktop standardization, and goodness knows what else. I do not think any company has ever packed so many useful features in a single product and then turned around and priced it this low. Any user can price out how much it would cost to buy a security package, Desktop management software, .INI maintenance package, system backup, possibly the world's best file manager, and a lot more.

I do wish Stardock would put in an Associations Editor. There are numerous freeware and shareware ones available but it would be nice if they came with this product. Maybe ODPro 2.0 will have one!

Conclusions

The feeling one gets when installing Object Desktop Professional is one of completeness. After I installed Object Desktop (or ODPro) I felt like saying, "Now I'm ready to really go to Warp speed!"

Stardock says users can upgrade to ODPro from Object Desktop 1.5 for $69.95 until the end of September when the upgrade price will increase to $99. People with Object Desktop 1.0 can upgrade to ODPro for $119 from either Stardock or their favorite reseller. ODPro new is $179.

I think Stardock is going to be in for a surprise when they discover that most OS/2 users are power users and not using OS/2 as a casual hobby. Even if you only plan to use a couple of the features of ODPro, it is well worth the price.

Object Desktop Professional
by Stardock Systems
MSRP: US$199
MSRP Upgrade: US$69.95 - US$119

Alex Bradley is the editor of OS/2 Review, one of the longest running electronic OS/2 periodicals.

[Our Sponsor: Best of OS/2 - News, demos, over 150 products, Hobbes Report and more!]

This page is maintained by Falcon Networking. We welcome your suggestions.