May 16, 1998 Reader Survey Results

In our very first OS/2 e-Zine! Reader Survey, we asked our readers what type of machine they used to run OS/2. Over a year has passed since then and we though it was time to update our survey results. Have OS/2ers updated their equipment to take advantage of newer and faster Intel processors? Have they moved on to alternative suppliers such as AMD or Cyrix? To find out, last issue we asked about "You Hardware and Software".

Answers to our survey were accepted from May 16th until May 29th. We had a total of 1,704 replies to our questionnaire with 90 "spoiled" entries (replies were considered "spoiled" if they did not contain an e-mail address, if all questions were not answered or if they were duplicates). This left 1,614 valid replies. The results were as follows:

Type and Speed of CPU

Our first two questions last time asked readers to indicate their CPU type and speed. For reasons of convenience and relevance, we combined these answers into one CPU/Speed rating (for example, Intel Pentium 166 Mhz).

There seems to have been a marked shift in CPU choices since our initial hardware survey. At that time Intel had a clear lead (72.2% of all our readers chose an Intel CPU of some kind), but Cyrix seemed a strong contender to the throne with 12.7% of our readers choosing chips from that manufacturer. There has been a radical shift in market share in the last year with Intel chips being used by just 40.0% of our readers now. However, Cyrix has not made significant gains in that same time; their use was reported by only 12.8% of our readers -- a gain of only one tenth of a percent.

AMD is the big winner in this race. Last year roughly 9.6% of OS/2ers were using AMD chips to run their machines. Now 21.8% of you report that you have one in your system. The bulk of these AMD users have purchased the popular K6 chips, notably the 200 Mhz (4.8%) and 233 Mhz (7.0%) versions.

While Intel did lose market share overall, they were, of course, still the leader in our poll. And they also still had the largest single group of users -- those with a Pentium 133 Mhz CPU. Also, the Pentium Pro did not show big gains in popularity in the past year, but it did increase from 7.2% use last time to 8.9% this time. And naturally, there were as clear shift to the faster Pentium MMX and Pentium II machines this time.

No readers reported that their primary OS/2 machines were running on PowerPC chips.

Number of CPUs

Last year, as expected, the vast majority of readers (97.3%) were using machines with only one CPU. This year results were essentially similar, but with a slight decrease (97.0%) of single-chip machines. The difference seems to have been made up by a slight increase in users with 2 CPUs in their machines; last time 1.9%, this time 2.4%. Since we offered a fill in the blank space this time around, users were able to indicate exactly how many CPUs they have, and remarkably, two lucky souls out there have 200 and 250 CPUs, respectively. Now those are machines that could be used to crack encryption!

Amount of RAM

As with the Number of CPUs, we offered a fill in the blank style answer space for the amount of RAM our readers have this time (as opposed to a multiple choice list last time). The results, not surprisingly considering the nosedive in RAM prices over the past year, show most people moving to more and more memory. While last year revealed the majority of our readers (57.3%) had 32 Meg or less, things have shifted greatly now, with 61.0% of OS/2ers reporting 64 Meg or more.

The single largest group (39.2%) reports 64 Meg exactly, and 10.6% of readers have 128 Meg, two amounts common for obvious reasons. However, there are still significant numbers of OS/2ers with only 32 Meg in their machines -- 22.2%, to be exact.

Total Hard Disk Size

The results from our question on hard disk size were a nightmare to calculate. Despite the fact that we offered a blank where readers were meant to enter the number of Megabytes of hard disk they had available, we were overwhelmed by the variety of capacities, and the variety of ways people chose to indicate those capacities. We saw everything from "2" (clearly meaning 2 Gigabytes, since 2 Megabytes is not enough hard drive room to install DOS 6.0, let alone OS/2) to 10,000,000 (which we assumed was meant to be 10 Gigabytes, not 10,000,000 Megabytes -- at least we don't think anyone out there has 10 Terabytes in their machines!). And we also received every variation you can imagine in between: 3.2; 3,2; 3.0 G; 3Gig; 5Gb; etc. Needless to say, manual sorting was required.

Next year when we repeat this survey, we will use a less imprecise form, possibly something like:

Hard Disk:

.

Kilobytes

Megabytes

Gigabytes

Terabytes

So keep in mind that the results for this question, as all results from our surveys, should not be viewed as 100% accurate.

Having said that, we can say that the "bigger is better" trend is also working in the hard drive market. No significant numbers of our readers (only 5.6%) are using anything less than 1 Gigabyte drives. Over half (50.1%) had drives between 2.0 and 4.5 Gig. Astoundingly, unless we misinterpreted the results of our survey, there are people out there with 60, 62 and 83.5 Gigabyte hard drives!

Hard Disk Type(s)

While the expected majority of users (59.4%) have exclusively IDE/EIDE hard drives in their systems, we found from our survey that a reasonably large group (39.3%) have only SCSI or both SCSI and IDE/EIDE. Probably these people chose SCSI devices for their superior performance with a true multitasking OS.

Base OS/2 Version

Finally we asked our readers what version of OS/2 they are using. Last year we found that the majority of OS/2ers (76.8%) had moved on to Warp 4 without much hesitation. This year we find that that number has grown even more. Now 88.0% of our readers say they are using Warp 4, while only a handful (10.0%) are still using Warp 3.

That's it for this month. Don't forget to fill out this month's questionnaire and check back on June 13th for complete results.

Complete May 16, 1998 Survey Results

Type and Speed of CPU

Category	Count	Percentage
AMD Am486 (50 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD Am486 (66 Mhz)	3	0.2%
AMD Am486 (80 Mhz)	4	0.2%
AMD Am486 (100 Mhz)	19	1.2%
AMD Am486 (120 Mhz)	4	0.2%
AMD Am486 (133 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD Am5x86 (90 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD Am5x86 (100 Mhz)	3	0.2%
AMD Am5x86 (120 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD Am5x86 (133 Mhz)	28	1.7%
AMD Am5x86 (150 Mhz)	2	0.1%
AMD Am5x86 (160 Mhz)	6	0.4%
AMD Am5x86 (167 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD Am5x86 (200 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD-K5 (75 Mhz)	2	0.1%
AMD-K5 (100 Mhz)	2	0.1%
AMD-K5 (120 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD-K5 (133 Mhz)	11	0.7%
AMD-K5 (166 Mhz)	9	0.6%
AMD-K5 (200 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD-K6 (120 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD-K6 (133 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD-K6 (166 Mhz)	20	1.2%
AMD-K6 (188 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD-K6 (200 Mhz)	78	4.8%
AMD-K6 (207.5 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD-K6 (210 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD-K6 (225 Mhz)	6	0.4%
AMD-K6 (230 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD-K6 (233 Mhz)	113	7.0%
AMD-K6 (262.5 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD-K6 (266 Mhz)	7	0.4%
AMD-K6 (300 Mhz)	3	0.2%
AMD-K6 (337.5 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD / NexGen Nx586 (90 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD / NexGen Nx586 (100 Mhz)	1	0.1%
AMD / NexGen Nx586 (110 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Cyrix 486DX2 (66 Mhz)	2	0.1%
Cyrix 486DX2 (80 Mhz)	3	0.2%
Cyrix 5x86 (100 Mhz)	5	0.3%
Cyrix 5x86 (120 Mhz)	3	0.2%
Cyrix 5x86 (133 Mhz)	4	0.2%
Cyrix 5x86 (150 Mhz)	2	0.1%
Cyrix 5x86 (166 Mhz)	4	0.2%
Cyrix 5x86 (200 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86 (100 Mhz)	3	0.2%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86 (110 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86 (120 Mhz)	9	0.6%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86 (133 Mhz)	22	1.4%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86 (166 Mhz)	29	1.8%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86 (150 Mhz)	20	1.2%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86 (153 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86 (150/200 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86 (200 Mhz)	5	0.3%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86L (133 Mhz)	6	0.4%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86L (150 Mhz)	6	0.4%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86L (166 Mhz)	6	0.4%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86L (200 Mhz)	19	1.2%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86MX (120 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86MX (150 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86MX (166 Mhz)	4	0.2%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86MX (200 Mhz)	21	1.3%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86MX (233 Mhz)	12	0.7%
Cyrix / IBM 6x86MX (266 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Cyrix M II (150 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Cyrix M II (166 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Cyrix M II (200 Mhz)	1	0.1%
IBM Blue Lightning (66 Mhz)	2	0.1%
IBM Blue Lightning (75 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel 386 (20 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel 486 (25 Mhz)	4	0.2%
Intel 486 (33 Mhz)	7	0.4%
Intel 486 (40 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel 486 (50 Mhz)	13	0.8%
Intel 486 (66 Mhz)	33	2.0%
Intel 486 (75 Mhz)	4	0.2%
Intel 486 (80 Mhz)	2	0.1%
Intel 486 (100 Mhz)	18	1.1%
Intel 486 (120 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel Pentium (60 Mhz)	6	0.4%
Intel Pentium (66 Mhz)	2	0.1%
Intel Pentium (70 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel Pentium (75 Mhz)	28	1.7%
Intel Pentium (83 Mhz)	3	0.2%
Intel Pentium (90 Mhz)	50	3.1%
Intel Pentium (100 Mhz)	58	3.6%
Intel Pentium (120 Mhz)	37	2.3%
Intel Pentium (122 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel Pentium (133 Mhz)	148	9.2%
Intel Pentium (150 Mhz)	21	1.3%
Intel Pentium (160 Mhz)	2	0.1%
Intel Pentium (166 Mhz)	93	5.8%
Intel Pentium (180 Mhz)	2	0.1%
Intel Pentium (200 Mhz)	55	3.4%
Intel Pentium (225 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel Pentium (233 Mhz)	5	0.3%
Intel Pentium MMX (133 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel Pentium MMX (150 Mhz)	4	0.2%
Intel Pentium MMX (166 Mhz)	50	3.1%
Intel Pentium MMX (180 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel Pentium MMX (200 Mhz)	94	5.8%
Intel Pentium MMX (220 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel Pentium MMX (225 Mhz)	3	0.2%
Intel Pentium MMX (233 Mhz)	44	2.7%
Intel Pentium MMX (250 Mhz)	2	0.1%
Intel Pentium MMX (262 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel Pentium MMX (266 Mhz)	2	0.1%
Intel Pentium MMX (290 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel Pentium Pro (180 Mhz)	15	0.9%
Intel Pentium Pro (150 Mhz)	6	0.4%
Intel Pentium Pro (166 Mhz)	2	0.1%
Intel Pentium Pro (200 Mhz)	109	6.8%
Intel Pentium Pro (233 Mhz)	8	0.5%
Intel Pentium Pro (266 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel Pentium Pro (300 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel Pentium II (180 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel Pentium II (200 Mhz)	2	0.1%
Intel Pentium II (233 Mhz)	33	2.0%
Intel Pentium II (266 Mhz)	35	2.2%
Intel Pentium II (300 Mhz)	30	1.9%
Intel Pentium II (330 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel Pentium II (333 Mhz)	4	0.2%
Intel Pentium II (338 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel Pentium II (350 Mhz)	2	0.1%
Intel Pentium II (400 Mhz)	4	0.2%
Intel Pentium II (466 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Intel Pentium II (500 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Other AMD (133 Mhz)	2	0.1%
Other AMD (200 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Other Cyrix (50 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Other Cyrix (100 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Other Cyrix (133 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Other Cyrix (166 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Other IBM (50 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Other IBM (100 Mhz)	2	0.1%
Other IBM (200 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Other Intel (83 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Other Unspecified (50 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Other Unspecified (89 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Other Unspecified (100 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Other Unspecified (110 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Other Unspecified (133 Mhz)	1	0.1%
Other Unspecified (180 Mhz)	1	0.1%
TOTAL	1,614	101.6%

Number of CPUs

Category	Count	Percentage
1	1,566	97.0%
2	39	2.4%
3	1	0.1%
4	1	0.1%
5	1	0.1%
10	2	0.1%
200	1	0.1%
250	1	0.1%
TOTAL	1,614	100.0%

Amount of RAM

Category	Count	Percentage
8 Meg	3	0.2%
10 Meg	1	0.1%
11 Meg	1	0.1%
12 Meg	2	0.1%
16 Meg	33	2.0%
20 Meg	16	1.0%
24 Meg	35	2.2%
28 Meg	3	0.2%
29 Meg	1	0.1%
32 Meg	359	22.2%
36 Meg	5	0.3%
38 Meg	1	0.1%
40 Meg	55	3.4%
44 Meg	1	0.1%
47 Meg	1	0.1%
48 Meg	111	6.9%
54 Meg	1	0.1%
56 Meg	1	0.1%
60 Meg	1	0.1%
64 Meg	633	39.2%
65 Meg	3	0.2%
72 Meg	6	0.4%
73 Meg	1	0.1%
74 Meg	1	0.1%
80 Meg	45	2.8%
90 Meg	3	0.2%
95 Meg	1	0.1%
96 Meg	75	4.6%
97 Meg	2	0.1%
98 Meg	9	0.6%
104 Meg	2	0.1%
108 Meg	1	0.1%
128 Meg	171	10.6%
131 Meg	1	0.1%
132 Meg	2	0.1%
160 Meg	2	0.1%
166 Meg	1	0.1%
192 Meg	4	0.2%
196 Meg	3	0.2%
224 Meg	1	0.1%
256 Meg	12	0.7%
384 Meg	2	0.1%
2047 Meg	1	0.1%
TOTAL	1,614	100.4%

Total Hard Disk Size

Category	Count	Percentage
100 Meg	2	0.1%
116 Meg	1	0.1%
120 Meg	1	0.1%
250 Meg	3	0.2%
258 Meg	1	0.1%
260 Meg	2	0.1%
295 Meg	1	0.1%
300 Meg	1	0.1%
302 Meg	1	0.1%
320 Meg	1	0.1%
400 Meg	1	0.1%
420 Meg	1	0.1%
440 Meg	1	0.1%
500 Meg	4	0.2%
512 Meg	2	0.1%
520 Meg	1	0.1%
540 Meg	7	0.4%
551 Meg	1	0.1%
560 Meg	1	0.1%
600 Meg	4	0.2%
611 Meg	1	0.1%
650 Meg	2	0.1%
660 Meg	1	0.1%
680 Meg	1	0.1%
695 Meg	1	0.1%
700 Meg	1	0.1%
730 Meg	1	0.1%
740 Meg	1	0.1%
780 Meg	1	0.1%
800 Meg	10	0.6%
820 Meg	1	0.1%
840 Meg	2	0.1%
850 Meg	9	0.6%
853 Meg	1	0.1%
860 Meg	1	0.1%
880 Meg	3	0.2%
900 Meg	4	0.2%
940 Meg	1	0.1%
1.0 Gig	44	2.7%
1.1 Gig	6	0.4%
1.2 Gig	46	2.9%
1.3 Gig	19	1.2%
1.4 Gig	7	0.4%
1.5 Gig	15	0.9%
1.6 Gig	31	1.9%
1.7 Gig	16	1.0%
1.8 Gig	7	0.4%
1.9 Gig	2	0.1%
2.0 Gig	100	6.2%
2.1 Gig	60	3.7%
2.2 Gig	13	0.8%
2.3 Gig	8	0.5%
2.4 Gig	9	0.6%
2.5 Gig	63	3.9%
2.6 Gig	10	0.6%
2.7 Gig	5	0.3%
2.8 Gig	9	0.6%
2.9 Gig	4	0.2%
3.0 Gig	92	5.7%
3.1 Gig	24	1.5%
3.2 Gig	64	4.0%
3.3 Gig	16	1.0%
3.4 Gig	11	0.7%
3.5 Gig	25	1.5%
3.6 Gig	8	0.5%
3.7 Gig	12	0.7%
3.8 Gig	6	0.4%
4.0 Gig	109	6.8%
4.1 Gig	27	1.7%
4.2 Gig	17	1.1%
4.3 Gig	73	4.5%
4.4 Gig	6	0.4%
4.5 Gig	35	2.2%
4.6 Gig	8	0.5%
4.7 Gig	2	0.1%
4.8 Gig	9	0.6%
5.0 Gig	54	3.3%
5.1 Gig	10	0.6%
5.2 Gig	8	0.5%
5.3 Gig	7	0.4%
5.4 Gig	3	0.2%
5.5 Gig	14	0.9%
5.6 Gig	5	0.3%
5.7 Gig	4	0.2%
5.8 Gig	3	0.2%
5.9 Gig	2	0.1%
6.0 Gig	57	3.5%
6.1 Gig	4	0.2%
6.2 Gig	10	0.6%
6.3 Gig	9	0.6%
6.4 Gig	39	2.4%
6.5 Gig	17	1.1%
6.6 Gig	1	0.1%
6.7 Gig	3	0.2%
6.8 Gig	5	0.3%
7.0 Gig	29	1.8%
7.1 Gig	2	0.1%
7.2 Gig	1	0.1%
7.4 Gig	4	0.2%
7.5 Gig	7	0.4%
7.6 Gig	4	0.2%
7.8 Gig	1	0.1%
7.9 Gig	1	0.1%
8.0 Gig	39	2.4%
8.1 Gig	3	0.2%
8.2 Gig	6	0.4%
8.4 Gig	10	0.6%
8.5 Gig	4	0.2%
8.6 Gig	2	0.1%
8.9 Gig	3	0.2%
9.0 Gig	24	1.5%
9.1 Gig	4	0.2%
9.2 Gig	1	0.1%
9.3 Gig	1	0.1%
9.4 Gig	1	0.1%
9.5 Gig	4	0.2%
9.6 Gig	5	0.3%
9.7 Gig	2	0.1%
10.0 Gig	22	1.4%
10.1 Gig	1	0.1%
10.2 Gig	2	0.1%
10.4 Gig	1	0.1%
10.5 Gig	1	0.1%
10.7 Gig	1	0.1%
11.0 Gig	5	0.3%
11.2 Gig	2	0.1%
11.3 Gig	1	0.1%
11.6 Gig	1	0.1%
12.0 Gig	17	1.1%
12.6 Gig	1	0.1%
12.8 Gig	2	0.1%
12.0 Gig	1	0.1%
13.0 Gig	4	0.2%
13.4 Gig	1	0.1%
14.0 Gig	4	0.2%
14.8 Gig	1	0.1%
15.0 Gig	6	0.4%
15.3 Gig	1	0.1%
16.0 Gig	6	0.4%
16.4 Gig	1	0.1%
16.8 Gig	1	0.1%
17.0 Gig	1	0.1%
18.0 Gig	2	0.1%
19.0 Gig	1	0.1%
20.0 Gig	2	0.1%
22.0 Gig	2	0.1%
25.0 Gig	1	0.1%
31.0 Gig	1	0.1%
32.0 Gig	1	0.1%
33.4 Gig	1	0.1%
44.0 Gig	3	0.2%
47.0 Gig	1	0.1%
51.0 Gig	1	0.1%
54.0 Gig	1	0.1%
60.0 Gig	1	0.1%
62.0 Gig	1	0.1%
83.5 Gig	1	0.1%
TOTAL	1614	101.5%

Hard Disk Type(s)

Category	Count	Percentage
IDE/EIDE	959	59.4%
SCSI	435	27.0%
Both	198	12.3%
I don't know	1	0.1%
TOTAL	1,614	98.8%

Base OS/2 Version

Category	Count	Percentage
OS/2 1.x	0	0.0%
OS/2 2.x	0	0.0%
OS/2 2.x SMP	2	0.1%
OS/2 for the PowerPC	0	0.0%
OS/2 Warp Server	19	1.2%
OS/2 Warp 3	161	10.0%
OS/2 Warp 4	1,421	88.0%
Other	10	0.6%
TOTAL	1,614	99.9%

Copyright © 1998 - Falcon Networking

ISSN 1203-5696