The OS/2 e-Zine! Staff are made up of professionals involved in and around OS/2. Many have a long background as supporters of the platform, as programmers, consultants, and sometimes just users.

Blast Back! Send a private message directly to OS/2 e-Zine! Staff with your thoughts:

Contact OS/2 e-Zine!

Go to a Printer Friendly version of this page

Summary: A quick look at some new products just appearing for OS/2, as well as nifty little gadgets to make work easier.

ConfigInfo 7

While there are a few graphical CONFIG.SYS editors around that make an easy job of sorting your LIBPATH statements and modifying the cache size, very seldomly do they actually help you make sense of the gobbledygook found in OS/2's complex configuration file, nor do they offer much advice for optimization. This is where ConfigInfo steps in. ConfigInfo is not so much an editor as it is a de-mystifier. Showing two panes (.GIF, 17K), it loads your CONFIG.SYS into the top pane and reserves the bottom for detailed explanations of each line. With it, you can scroll through the configuration file line by line and have each device driver, SET line and other obscure setting explained to you.

The descriptions of your CONFIG.SYS file's contents are extremely comprehensive and written in plain English. But not only that, they also offer tips and advice for optimization and speed improvements. A special section lists all the really obscure settings that aren't included in a default install, but might be handy to those running file servers or memory constrained systems.

Originally created by Rick Meigs, the program has been adopted by Klaus Staedtler to keep its valuable knowledge base up to date with the latest versions of Warp and their fixpacks.

Minta 2.0

Much to the chagrin of the recording industry, it looks as if MP3 (see sidebar for related articles) may become a major new means of distributing music. Not illegally, of course, for many new and unsigned bands are releasing their music over the Internet in this format while they wait patiently for a talent scout to "discover" them. Plus, people are using it as an alternative to blank tapes to make copies of albums they already own. Companies like Diamond multimedia and others are even making MP3 "walkmans" and MP3 based car stereos.

Making sense of a growing collection of MP3 files may be a headache waiting to happen, however. Unlike cassette tapes, MP3 files don't have labels that you can write the name of the artist and song on. Quite often, it's the filename that has to carry all the information. But the MP3 file format, as interpreted by most players, does include a provision for descriptive tags. With them you can note the artist, song title, song genre, general comments and even what track off the CD it's from.

While the two main MP3 players for OS/2 (PM123 and WarpAMP) provide good tag-editors, Minta does a better job. Minta can scan your directories and make a list of all the MP3 files it finds, ready for you to page through and edit the descriptions for.

If you have a whole album's worth of files freshly converted, Minta has features that make it easy to enter descriptions for the whole bunch - carrying over common information such as the Artist name and automatically advancing the track number. Minta can also generate a text file listing of all selected MP3 files, complete with their file names, song names and artis, running time and other essentials on a configurable basis.

ConfigInfo 7

by Rick Meigs/Klaus Staedtler
download from Hobbes Archive (188K)
Registration: Freeware

Minta 2.0

by Thorsten Thielen
download from Hobbes Archive (310K)
Registration: Free