Summary: The results of our November 16^th survey show what we probably already knew: A strong lean towards power and reliability in an operating system.

In our last issue we ran the risk of asking a question we thought we already knew the answer to: What do you consider the most important nature of an operating system? Asking this of a group of OS/2 users gave us results that didn't surprise us, but enlightened us when we saw what their second most important value was.

For this survey we had a total of 1058 votes, with 42 spoiled entries, giving a grand total of 1016 valid entries. A vote was considered spoiled if it wasn't accompanied by a valid e-mail address, didn't answer all questions, or was a duplicate.

What is the most important nature of an operating system to you?

While we baited the survey with choices such as "Strong application support" or "ease of use", the majority of readers (56.7%) made a bee-line for reliability as their number one most important trait of an operating system. It was closely followed by Power or Flexibility (31%), creating a picture of OS/2 owners as power users, not primarily concerned with "chrome". We had thought that ease-of-use would score high too, but it was one of the lowest scoring options of all, with only 20 readers voting for it. Internet integration also scored abysmally low. A conspicuous vote against the philosophies introduced by Windows 98, we imagine.<

What is the second most important nature?

Here's where it started to get interesting. While the vote for Reliability and Power remained strong, the vote for strong application support nearly tripled as readers cast it as their choice for their second most important trait. Ease of use also jumped considerably, but still ranked as one of the lowest options.

Some conclusions that can be drawn are that application support is still dear to the minds of power users. If OS/2 draws many power users who are concerned with flexibility and reliability, but still need a lot of third party development going on, then it does more to reinforce just how important it is for a platform to have it. Newcomers like Be and Linux may have some very desirable features in the operating systems themselves, but they mean naught without programs to run on them.

Complete November 16^th Survey Results

What is the most important nature of an operating system to you?

Category	Count	Percentage
Strong application support	92	9.0%
Ease of use	20	2.0%
Power/Flexibility	315	31.0%
Reliability	577	56.7%
Internet integration	8	0.8%
Other	4	0.4%
TOTAL	1,016	99.9%

What is the second most important?

Category	Count	Percentage
Strong application support	247	24.3%
Ease of use	81	8.0%
Power/Flexibility	387	38.1%
Reliability	260	25.6%
Internet integration	39	3.8%
Other	2	0.2%
TOTAL	1,016	100.0%