[Please note: this is a text only version of the on-line magazine, OS/2 e-Zine!.  OS/2 e-Zine! is a graphical, WWW OS/2 publication and, if possible, should be viewed in its HTML format available on-line at http://www.os2ezine.com/ or zipped for off-line reading.  Some graphically oriented articles have been removed from this document.]


OS/2 e-Zine!		August 1, 1998		volume 3, number 11
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Copyright 1998		Falcon Networking  	ISSN 1203-5696

         "Over Three Quarters of a Million Satisfied Visitors!"


OPINIONS:

  Chris' Rant
  Good Guys, Bad Guys and The Future of OS/2


DEPARTMENTS:

  OS/21st


REVIEWS:

  INTERNET PORTALS

  Introduction - Chris Wenham
  MyExcite - Christopher B. Wright
  Netcenter & My Netscape - Chris Wenham
  My Yahoo - Chris Wenham
  Snap! - Lief Clennon


  COMMUNICATOR FOR OS/2 - FIRST LOOKS


  First Looks and Nifty Gadgets

	Tyra/2 1.10		File Browser Beta 1
  

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Results from our July 16th Survey
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Copyright 1998   -   Falcon Networking
ISSN 1203-5696

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Piracy	- by Chris Wenham

Summary: Is software piracy theft, or a symptom of a flawed ownership model? Chris examines the vendors and the users points of view and touches on where alternate models might take us. 

Is it easy to get the commercial software you want for free, just by downloading it over the Internet? It is, if you're determined to look and spend the time hanging out in the right places. IRC is a good place to start, you can probably figure out the obvious channels to join and lurk in. Your news server is also likely to carry a few binary groups with the right kind of stuff to be found, a little for OS/2, a lot for Windows. And once in a while a large, 12-or-so megabyte archive will appear on the popular OS/2 shareware archives for a few hours before the administrator discovers and deletes it. It'll be Partition Magic (3.0 was leaked some time ago), or DeScribe (leaked recently), or perhaps only a small text file with the registration codes for a few popular shareware applications. 

Is software piracy a problem to be eliminated by more copy protection schemes and law enforcement, or is it better solved by changing the way in which software is owned? To get a better idea of the problem we have to look at it from two points of view; the vendors' and the buyers'. 

The Vendors

Piracy is a form of theft. I don't care how cheap CDs or Internet downloads are, it costs real money to have software developed and tested. If nobody is going to pay for it, then the software company is clearly going to loose money when it can't pay its employees and landlord. From the vendor's point of view, they've created intellectual property and feel they deserve to be paid fairly for it by everyone who chooses to use it. Whatever price they set for that software, be it a measly ten bucks or five thousand dollars, those are the conditions of using the software. If a user can't afford it, then they don't have the right nor do they deserve to use the software. Merely being one of those who "wouldn't have bought it anyway" is no excuse -- since why should poverty or disinterest exclude you from the rules that everyone else must live by? 

For the vendors, their position is clear: If customers don't like the conditions of using the software then they have the right not to buy it. Nobody else has the right to think they are an exception.

The Users 

For the users, piracy is a small sin that doesn't really hurt anyone. Let's put it this way: you can't afford the software, you wouldn't have bought it anyway, the vendor hasn't lost a sale because no potential sale was ever there, so no money has been lost. There is, however, one more person using a productive application and getting work done. The world is a tiny little bit better than it was before, because thanks to cheap copying of software, real wealth can be produced out of thin air. 

There's also the issue of irresponsible vendors. Take Microsoft, they make lousy software and Bill Gates is a multibillionaire who isn't going to miss a hundred dollar program. Why should we endorse shoddy software? Bill needs to be punished a little bit for his greed. And then there's AutoDesk or Adobe, they charge a fortune! Why not protest unreasonable prices? 

It's worth taking a moment to spank both vendors and users on the wrist for some bad behavior when dealing with the piracy problem. Software companies are notorious for exaggerating their "losses" by counting all estimated pirate copies of their software as lost sales -- resulting in grossly over inflated figures. They conveniently disregard the fact that a large percentage of pirate copies were, indeed, never potential sales to begin with . Users too are guilty by deliberately continuing to use a pirated copy of software even when they can afford to buy it. 

So is piracy a symptom of a flawed ownership model -- one where you don't really buy software but buy a license to use the software instead? If this is so, we need to decide if there is really any serious alternative. What if you change the conditions of ownership from licensing the right to use software to actually buying the program and all that real ownership entails? 

Licensing has the effect of supplying legal grounds to force companies to purchase a separate copy of the software for every machine they install it on. You don't actually own the software, you've merely negotiated the right to use it. 

Buying software means you own all rights to what you hold in your hands when you pick up that shrink wrapped box. Just like you have the right to do as you please to a television you purchased, buying software implies that a company can order one copy on one set of disks, then go about installing that one copy on all of the hundreds or thousands of machines owned. Just like you have the right to pass on the newspaper you bought to anybody for them to read. You can see right away that software vendors, who's bread and buttercomes from large site licenses, have very little incentive to try this ownership method. 

Vendors could also switch to a free/open software approach. The software is given away for free, still copyrighted but without a retail price. The vendor can then sell support contracts for the product, everything from fifty bucks for home users all the way up to ten thousand dollar, dedicated technician and on-site service contracts for corporations. Well, this is all nice and good, but if you read between the lines you'll notice that it gives the vendor no incentive whatsoever to make their software easy to use and trouble free. Maybe competition will drive a vendor to make their software a little bit easier to use than the next guy's, but at some point the decreased need for support will undercut any advantages that could be gained from winning the contract. Ever notice that free software tends to have notoriously lousy user interfaces? This isn't just because the programmers can't afford to develop one! 

Without the financial incentives, most of the companies making the software we like to use will stick to their current licensing based model of ownership.

Moving back to piracy, we see that it has a lot to do with general disrespect for intellectual property. The term itself, "intellectual property", begs to be frowned upon. How poorly it fits into the world of greasy T-shirt computer hackers and nonconformists. In fact, it's openly criticized by advocates of free software such as Richard Stallman (and don't accuse me of calling Stallman a piracy advocate either). But if intellectual property rights are not respected, can we expect the creators to keep on creating? 

There are those who are perfectly willing to work for free and see their creations used and modified everywhere without a hint of remuneration. But in an argument against making all software and information free: not everyone wants to work for intangibles like reputation and recognition alone. Some have mouths to pay and bills to feed. If your talent in life is as a writer or programmer, don't you deserve the chance to earn a living proportionate to your skills? Working as a freelance programmer or consultant might earn you a living when a company wants a custom application, but these jobs are all uninspired. The best music always comes from someone working from the heart, not a corporate directive. This is also seen in software. 

Piracy is a slap in the face of every creator. Piracy is possible because the creations in question are pieces of information and the technology of computers makes it possible to copy information quickly, cheaply, in bulk, and without being noticed. It doesn't matter if the pirate's philosophy or ethics tells him he's right, it's still a violation of what the creator considers to be his rights. Ultimately the creator has the final say: He can cease to create, and nobody wins.   

I'm going to come down on the side of the content and software creators because I am one. Want to use a piece of software? Then you'd better be ready to play by the vendor's rules. Don't like the rules? Then vote with your wallet and teach the vendor a lesson by withholding your money, but don't be a hypocrite and break the law by copying the software illegally. If you need the software, first try to find alternatives, and if that doesn't work then you'd better sit down and evaluate what your needs really are and just how reasonable your expectations are. Any schmuck could decide one day that he'd like to be an architect, and then bawl his eyes out because AutoCAD is so unfairly expensive. It doesn't give him a right to pirate it. 

And yet piracy is one of the easiest crimes to commit and get away with today, easier than stealing an apple from a fruit stand or opening up a fire hydrant on a hot day. It's no surprise then that a lot of pirates are kids who aren't yet mature enough to understand what they're doing and why it's wrong. For all these little brats, I hope the software vendors will offer some amnesty. And why? Because I was one. 

I'm interested to hear what you have to say about the ethics and damages of piracy, I'm also very interested in learning about alternate methods of software ownership. If you've got an opinion, talk to me in our (http://www.os2ezine.com/forums/get/forums/rant/august1-1998.html) Hypernews forum.

                         - * -

(chris@os2ezine.com) Chris Wenham is the Senior Editor of OS/2 e-Zine! -- a promotion from Assistant Editor which means his parking spot will now be wide enough to keep his bicycle and a trailer.

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***********************************

Good Guys, Bad Guys and The Future of OS/2	- by Pete Grubbs

Summary: How faith, loyalty and friendship make the difference between two platforms, and how these factors will influence the future of computers and OS/2. 

Whether you like him or not, Ralph Nader certainly gets his share of attention. He's weighed in on everything from automobiles to insurance and now he's focused on the computing industry. In recent months, Nader has come out strongly against the Microsoft monopoly, organized his own industry-wide meeting to discuss MS business practices and even published an open letter to IBM CEO Louis Gerstner, urging him to follow Netscape's lead and make OS/2's source code public. 

Not surprisingly, this last suggestion was brushed aside. After all, OS/2 may not be the cash cow that Windows is, but IBM has poured a lot of money into it and they're still making money from it in the banking industry. However, there is little doubt that IBM wants to drop Warp client and focus on Warp Server and Workspace on Demand (WSOD), effectively retreating from the OS wars, abandoning OS/2 client users and surrendering the PC field to Microsoft and a handful of Linux and BeOS users. 

Good Business Sense

On the face of it, this appears to be a good business move. After all, what sense does it make to compete with the ubiquitous Windows PC? There are, perhaps, hundreds of Windows-native applications for each lonely OS/2 app and thousands of Windows users for every single installation of Warp. As we all know, computer pundits have, erroneously, proclaimed the death and burial of OS/2 for at least three years, if not longer, devoting their time and energy into creating revisions of its obituary without realizing that it still has a lively base of users worldwide. Few, if any, of the mainstream media know what's going on in our world, and even fewer care, so we are ignored, condemned to a stereotype that sees us as geeky eccentrics who are technically savvy, but not very practical. 

While publications like OS/2  e-Zine! and events like Warpstock are proof positive that OS/2 is still viable, the sad truth is that most of the world considers Warp to be more of a walking ghost than a serious OS. An idea reinforced by the mainstream media. Now that Windows 98 is launched, Microsoft is only months away from pushing most of their user base, kicking and screaming, into Windows NT -- a product that is actually mature enough to compare with OS/2, even if it suffers by such comparisons more often than not. To top it all off, IBM has been making money, lots of money, by creating and supporting software for the Windows platform. In fact, it's making a lot more money writing and supporting Windows apps than it does supporting OS/2. Why in the world would it want to hang on to an OS that the rest of the world has pretty much passed by? 

Because, in the long run, it's good business. 

The American Way

In America, and this is a quintessentially American issue even if it does affect more than half of the world. The good guys have friends who stand with them, shoulder-to-shoulder, ready to face any threat or disaster, regardless of the consequences. You can always tell who the good guys are because their friends remain friends without a thought for their own safety or profit margin. The bad guys have to coerce or buy their allies and always settle for a pack of cowardly cretins who will run off to the Bahamas as soon as the going gets tough or the money runs out. 

Look at our culture, our, plays, books and movies: Star Wars, Lethal Weapon, Mortal Combat, Hamlet, Top Gun, The Lord of the Rings, Huck Finn and countless others are all built upon this idea that deeply abiding friendship and loyalty are inspired by the hero, not the villain. We believe that these are qualities that cannot be purchased or created through intimidation and we place a very high value on them. How many of you, gentle readers all, cheered when Han Solo appeared out of nowhere to save Luke Skywalker? How many of you walked out of the theater with a smile playing about your lips and a warm glow in your hearts? 

Bad guys?

Now, consider this: When Senator Orrin Hatch called for a Senate hearing to investigate Microsoft's business practices, when Ralph Nader called his own miniconvention, when the Software Publisher's Association published it's recent white paper calling for an expanded DOJ investigation, Microsoft's friends and allies rallied 'round the company to defend it, right? And, without doubt, some of those friends and allies were there because they wanted to be there. But how many were there because they felt pressured? How hard did MS twist on those arms to assure that the rest of the body would show up? Even if the accurate answer is "None" (and I don't believe for a second that this is the case), we find ourselves reasonably asking this question because we know how MS does business. We've seen the depositions from Compaq, read the recent (http://www.infoseek.com/Content?arn=a0654reuff-19980719&qt=%2BReuters+%2BRicardo+Correa&sv=IS&lk=noframes&col=NX&kt=A&ak=news1486) Reuters interview with former Acer employee Ricardo Correa or have been face to face with Microsoft ourselves. We can see their tactics writ large by the very fact that they've used the notorious Y2K bug to recklessly force the abandonment of billions of dollars of gear, hardware and software both, for reasons that have more to do with their profit margin than "the good of the industry" (a term that finally translates into, "that which is good for us;" after all, we are the industry). 

We know that MS has invested a fair chunk of change to lay some Astroturf in an effort to prop up its shaky corporate image. When it comes to seeing anyone or anything which supports the MS side, we have a legitimate right to ask tough questions and challenge the speaker or document's authenticity. Is it real or did MS pay for it? 

The Imperial Microsoft Empire and Darth Billy have earned our distrust. 

Good guys?

Now, how many people will attend Warpstock this year because they have to? How many ISVs, pundits, end users, managers, et. al., will be in attendance because there's a giant corporate gorilla reefing on their arms the whole way through the door? How many members of TeamOS/2 volunteer their time and expertise because they know their managers are looking over their shoulders, ready to write them up if they don't contribute? How many OS/2 user groups formed for the money? the prestige? the chicks? For that matter, how many members of the Warpstock steering committee are in this because they see it as a great way to advance their careers? 

How many of you use OS/2 because you're afraid not to? 

Not many, right? 

Warp has generated a fierce sense of loyalty throughout much of the computer community because of its outstanding performance and reliability. We see ourselves and our fellow OS/2 users as the good guys because we're sticking to our operating system against massive peer and economic pressure to do otherwise. It would be easy to knuckle under and admit defeat, but we won't go against our principles. We'll support each other, take on one of the most powerful corporations in the history of the world and spit in its eye. We know we have a superior OS; we know that the rest of the world is wrong, dammit, and we're not going to jump ship. 

Does this look familiar? It should. It's pretty much the description of 'hero' you'll find in the vast majority of our culture's art. We fit squarely into the role of the good guy. Performance and reliability issues notwithstanding, this may be one reason so many of us have stuck with OS/2 for so long. 

Image is . . .

In cultural terms, Microsoft and Windows don't appear to have the right stuff. The majority of those who champion Microsoft seem to do so because they're either forced into that position or they're paid to take it. The opposite seems to be true for OS/2. (Notice I said "seem." This may not actually be the case, but, from all appearances, it looks as though it is.) Without realizing it, Microsoft has created an image of itself which resonates very strongly with The Evil Bully, one of the cultural icons we love to hate and this will come back to haunt them if they don't correct it. 

Windows users are rarely as excited about their OS as Linux, Apple, Amiga or OS/2 users. They have accepted as fact that the world runs Windows and, like it or not, they toe the MS line. Even columnists like (http://www.zdnet.com/chkpt/adem2fpf/www.anchordesk.com/story/story_2209.html) Jesse Berst aren't immune to this syndrome. But grudging acceptance of this sort carries with it an inherent burden of anger. People who feel that they have to use Windows are not always people who want to use Windows and such anger, such resentment is cumulative. Unless it's contained, it will reach critical mass and blow up in time. 

If this is the case, the thoughtful person may ask, "Why haven't we seen some evidence of this anger?" In response to that, let me pose this question: How long has the computer world been a Windows world? How many years have people had to get good and angry? A decade? Less? My friends, that isn't a very long time. Even though it's hard for us to believe, the computer has not been always with us. Neither has Microsoft. This is a company that is setting itself up for a tremendous consumer revolt if it doesn't change its practices and improve its products. They need to make those changes now because as time goes on and the resentment builds. You'll start seeing a marked difference in the way the public perceives both company and product. In fact, the change is already upon us. 

. . . damn important

I remember a time not long ago when you couldn't find a bad word about MS or Bill Gates in print unless you looked at fringe publications which catered to the alternative OS crowd. This is far from the case today. I've seen a number of mainstream computer print and online publications (Computer World, ZDNet AnchorDesk, PC Week, InfoWorld Electric to name a few) whose editors, columnists and reporters are seriously taking the Redmond gorilla to task. It's taken them a long time to realize what we knew years ago, but they are finally waking up. If this trend continues, and I haven't seen anything which indicates that it won't, MS is going to look more and more like the bad guy and, sooner or later, a good chunk of end users are going to see it that way. When that happens, look for a deep hole because the fallout will spread far and wide. 

IBM's Choices

There's only one villain who's worse than the bully that beats up everyone: The Betrayer. Think of Judas Iscariot. Brutus. Macbeth. Robert Ford. In the 13th century, Dante saved the lowest level of Hell for those who had betrayed their benefactors. Nearly 800 years later, we still don't have much sympathy for someone who rats out his buddies. We become enraged when the hero gets screwed by his best friend or lover. Why? Well, we identify with the hero. We're up there on the big screen fighting the evil Empire, so we take it personally when we see Han turned over to Vader by Lando Calrissian. A part of us treats what we're seeing as though it were really happening to us, responding to the perceived act of betrayal as though it were real and we experience feelings of anger and a desire to even the score. This isn't an impulse that's confined strictly to the world of art. I doubt that there are many of you who haven't experienced, up close and personal, what it means to be deceived, tricked, bamboozled. Few other experiences in life leave as deep a feeling of resentment and distrust or as great a desire for revenge. 

How does all this relate to IBM and Warp? 

Very simply, IBM has to decide if it wants to follow a business plan that will eventually orphan, isolate and infuriate millions of OS/2 users worldwide, or if it will continue to support those few customers -- even though they may never represent more than a small fraction of its total customer base, real or potential. 

If they choose to abandon us, they will, without doubt, quickly realize some increased profits because they will be better able to align their resources to take advantage of a Windows market where they already have a strong presence. However, if they do this, they will not only run the risk of losing all or most of those former customers but they will be sending a clear message that IBM is yet another Judas, willing to sell out its staunchest friends and allies for 30 pieces of silver or its 20th century equivalent. 

While some of the world watching these events will chalk it up to business as usual, others will take note and perhaps decide that it might not be a wise idea to commit to a long-term relationship with IBM. After all, if IBM will put the screws to millions of users who have, in many cases, remained loyal to it and its OS for a decade or so despite tremendous pressure to bolt, what will prevent it from doing the same thing to a new client that represents half that many licenses? If I'm that new client, what guarantee can Big Blue come up with to reassure me that they won't dump me the way they dumped all those people using OS/2? 

Or, to put it another way, if you're dealing with Microsoft, you know you can expect to be bullied, pushed, shoved and generally mistreated, but at least it's a consistent form of abuse. You know you're going to take a beating, but it's the same beating over the same issues, it happens at about the same time each year and you can work it into your schedule. This is more acceptable than having a trusted confidant suddenly pull the rug from under your feet and smack you around if only for the simple reason that you can plan for the one but not the other. 

Conversely, if IBM remains faithful to us, the Warp client user, it has the opportunity to point out to any new customers that it has a proven track record of loyalty to its customer base, a marketing advantage that Microsoft claims to have but obviously doesn't. In the long run, this may be a lot more important than it looks. I believe that end users are getting tired of the vicious consumerism that has been the hallmark of the computer industry for the past decade. People are getting to the point where they are less and less interested in upgrading to every new piece of hardware or software that comes down the pike. They're getting fed up with trying to find places to stuff all those still serviceable but obsolete systems and software that don't support a 3-D desktop or WebTV. If the market moves in this direction, disgruntled users will be a company's worst nightmare and IBM would do well to avoid creating millions of the same worldwide by remaining loyal to us. 

Corporations have realized the importance of keeping their images clean for decades, but they often lose sight of the larger picture this involves. If IBM doesn't want to come across in the worst possible light, it would be well-advised to watch a few movies, take some notes and beware the dark side.  

                         - * -

(peg5@psu.edu) Pete Grubbs is a self-described OS/2 wonk, a doctoral candidate in English literature at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a part-time faculty member at Penn State and is currently developing a copy editing/creation service, The Document Doctor, which tailors documents for small businesses.

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OS/21st	- by Sam Henwrich

Thoughts On The Future Of The Perfect OS

Summary: Assuming the minimum guaranteed by Moore's law, how might the nature of an operating system change in the next 12 years?

What do you think computers and operating systems might be like in 12 years? In this time period, taking us to the year 2010, lets assume at a minimum that Moore's law keeps on track and produces twice as much computing power for the dollar every 18 months. At the end of 144 months, the power of computers should have doubled 8 times. What do you do with all that power? Here's some thoughts: 

Applications That Never Close

Hitachi has already produced the world's first 1 gigabyte memory module, using thirty two 256-megabit chips. This means computers are at the point of having almost as much RAM as hard drive space. That prompts an interesting idea: What if all the applications we run were loaded into RAM at install time and never exited? 

Consider that in 12 years the average computer could easily ship with 32 gigabytes of ram as standard, a power users machine might be equipped with 64 or 128 gigabytes of just RAM. At this point the ratio between data size (audio and video files, multimedia files etc.) and application size (the programs and their code libraries) will be far greater than it already is today. It won't be unusual to work with a 50 gigabyte movie with a 50 megabyte application, for example. And twenty 50-megabyte applications would be a drop in the bucket for a machine loaded with 32 gigabytes of RAM. 

With all your applications loaded into RAM at the same time, most of them staying dormant for days or months, the wait time to load them will be completely eliminated. Instead of starting an application, you switch to it. There is never any application which you can't switch to. The concept of actually loading an application from the disk whenever you need it will become as outdated as the old DOS days of having to close one program first before you start another. 

To be honest, the operating system might divide programs into two or more classes, the basic two being Applications and Utilities. Applications never close, they have no 'quit' or 'exit' option, they simply minimize when you're finished with them. Utilities will have the option of closing, however. It's like the difference between furniture and your vacuum cleaner -- Furniture you keep out all the time, but when you're finished with your vacuum cleaner you always put it back away in its cupboard. 

OS/2's Workplace Shell has sort of promoted this idea a little bit by the way it treats the launching of objects. Double clicking on an application or document icon will launch it if it isn't already running -- but switch to it if it is already running. Clearly the standard task-switching bars and window lists we're used to today won't be nearly sufficient enough when everything is running at the same time -- but Warp's Workplace Shell is already the best interface in the industry for organizing thousands of applications and documents. While I'm expecting the WPS will change a lot in 12 years, it's not as if we've got any major hurdles to leap over in that time. 

The Elimination Of Applications, And Documents That Never Close

The counter thesis to the above is to eliminate all standalone applications entirely, and instead shift the "never close" concept to documents. What we know of as the relationship between applications and the operating system -- that each are separate entities, will disappear in favor of a new model: That the operating system is your one and only application. Instead of buying a program that lets you edit letters or spreadsheets or video streams, you buy a Document Type that gets merged with the operating system. 

The Document Type is simply a CODEC or set of modules that give the operating system the power to load, save, and define how to set up the user interface to edit that document. Ideally the Document Type would be minimal in function and the user would buy extra features separately or in a bundle. These might be a function library for a spreadsheet, spell-check and thesaurus dictionaries for a word processor, filters and special effects for a paint program. 

Like with applications, the operating system might have to split documents into two different classes; mundane and special. Special documents would be left on the hard drive and loaded only when needed -- like the current model. Mundane documents are small enough and routine enough to stay in RAM all the time. The OS may also need to do some behavior analysis of the user and archive infrequently used files and Document Types to the hard drive. 

The Computer That You Don't Switch Off

If all applications or documents are to stay in RAM all the time, it'd be a pain in the rear for the computer to load them all up every time you switched it on in the morning, wouldn't it? That's why in 12 years you'll see computers that don't switch off, even after you pull the plug out. Like laptops of today, which can switch between battery and wall power instantly without interruption of service, so should the desktop computers of the future. 

All mission-critical environments have UPSes (Uninterruptable Power Supplies), but even a small UPS for a personal computer is fairly cheap -- about $80-90 -- so it won't be long before they get merged into the main box just like disk drives and modems did. Plus, in 12 years, battery technology and energy efficiency will have advanced to the point where you could run the machine for days or weeks without needing to recharge (I'm also assuming everyone will be using flat-screen displays by then, too.) 

During the times when you're not using the machine, you can either put it into energy saving standby mode or let it time-out on its own, just like a screen saver. We'll come to think of our computers as "Instant On" machines, and the boot-up process might happen only in the factories. 

And The OS That Doesn't Crash

So, now we come to the ultimate conclusion: If applications or documents are to stay loaded in memory all the time, and the computer is never switched off or rebooted, we need to have an operating system that does not and cannot crash. What we need is an OS that does not have a 'crash' condition, and you make it by simply not writing that condition into the operating system's code. 

This sounds about as ridiculous as the theory that you can make an indestructible airplane by building it out of the same metal that they make black boxes with. I mean the black box is always recovered intact, even in the worst airline disasters, right? 

But it's not as far fetched as it sounds, because 99% of all crashes, lockups and unrecoverable malfunctions are due to conditions the programmers didn't anticipate happening. The other 1% are hardware problems. (By the way, if any of you out there think this ratio is off, there's a nice talkback forum linked to at the bottom of this article, hint, hint.) This means that in theory, better programming practices, peer review of source code and reuse of stable code should get us to the point where the operating system never fails. Linux, as an example of a heavily peer-reviewed operating system, is already nearly crash proof. As a result it's very popular among companies wanting to build sealed boxes and consumer devices (price not being the main factor for these companies). 

Could it be that OS/2, highly stable but nowhere near crash proof today, will be in 12 years? In 12 years, IBM may have decided to open up the source code after all, or their decision to stabilize development of the kernel will mean 12 years of service packs has given us a true, bulletproof OS. Personally I favor the former, since the latter means nothing exciting to write about for a decade. 

When your machine does fail, hopefully only once every couple of years, then you know that the problem must be truly serious and it's time to take it down to the shop. 

Benefits and Costs

All of the benefits are obvious. Instantaneous loading (switching) of applications or documents, "Instant On", and reliability you don't even have to think about. But what will be the costs? 

The number of applications you can install and documents you can create would be limited by RAM. But then, they're already limited by hard disk. It's possible though that in 12 years, the difference between long term storage (what we now use hard drives for) and short term storage (RAM) will disappear with the development of fast, cheap, nonvolatile RAM.  If this day comes, the hard drive will fall back into specialized scientific and engineering use, and the only thing you'll have to worry about upgrading is RAM and possibly the CPU.

If you have your own ideas for OS/2 and what the future of computing might be like, talk about them in our (http://www.os2ezine.com/forums/get/forums/os21st/august1-1998.html) Hypernews forum.

                         - * -

Sam Henwrich is an upstate NY OS/2 user. He can be reached at (henwrich@yahoo.com) henwrich@yahoo.com.

***********************************

Internet Portals	- by Chris Wenham

Summary: We take a look at the wildly popular Internet portals and decide which ones are the best from the point of view of an OS/2 user.
 
The idea that all the portals revolve around is providing you with a 'home base' from which to start your browsing with. A good portal will be linked with an up-to-date search engine and web site directory, include descriptions of the sites you find, and provide you with news categorized into areas of interest. Other portals will also go further, offering free e-mail accounts, home page customization, chat and discussion forums. What the companies that provide the portals expect in return is attention; they want you to stick around and read their advertising banners. They may also be interested in selling you premium services and merchandise through an online store. 

Portals have evolved from the web directories, with nearly all of the major players having some kind of background as a search engine. Only two portals, Snap! and Netcenter, come from companies with no search-engine history and have either no customization features or are late entries. This means that most have a strong emphasis on the parent company's existing directory or search service, and more often than not it'll feel like you're visiting a search page that also has customizable news and features. 

Emerging into a new kind of web site, one that begins to act more like an application or utility than a mere page of information, portals have the potential to offer a lot to OS/2 users. There's no upgrades to download, no installation routine, no disk space used, and all the major number crunching takes place on somebody else's computer. With everything they offer now there's little reason not to try them out. 

We've reviewed the top Internet Portals from the point of view of an OS/2 user. This means that while we judged each portal based on its merits alone, we also sought to find what content and services relating to OS/2 was available. When there were extra bells and whistles like pagers and real-time chat rooms we tested them for compatibility. We also tested to see how well pages displayed in the currently available OS/2 web browsers. 

MyExcite

Chris Wright tells us what the #2 Internet portal does for Warped users and how well it can be customized. 

Snap!

Lief Clennon has a look at C|Net's entry, the only portal from a publishing-centered company so far. 

Netcenter & My Netscape

Just in the nick of time, the long anticipated customizable portal from Netscape goes online. Chris Wenham reviews it here. 

Editor's Choice: My Yahoo

Chris Wenham talks about the one that started the gold rush -- My Yahoo. This was the first mainstream Internet portal and still the best for OS/2 users in our judgment.

***********************************

MyExcite	- by Christopher B. Wright

Summary: Nearly there but not quite, MyExcite has some nice features that copy My Yahoo's, but does not dazzle the visitor.  
 
A few months ago, I was curious enough about all the Portal hoopla to set up a "MyExcite" portal account. After about 10 minutes of clicking around, I got bored and wandered away. Excite's portal has its uses, but it's not the end-all that they're hoping it will be, and quite frankly I doubt it ever will be. Bottom line, MyExcite doesn't live up to its hype, but there are some interesting features and you might want to set one up to visit occasionally. 

A MyExcite portal account looks like a web page with a lot of links. No fancy graphics, a few ads that you can pretty much ignore, just a whole lot of links leading to information. Much of the page is taken up with the headlines of news stories -- apparently Excite wants to be your online newspaper in the morning. From my experience, it's just as easy to type "http://www.abcnews.com" and get an entire news site at my fingertips, but people not used to navigating the Internet might like this feature. More amusing is the fact that MyExcite displays your daily horoscope along with links that allow you to determine your astrological compatibility with your spouse or partner. 

Content and Customization

The most useful features on the site, though, are the TV listings at the bottom and the weather report near the top of the page. When you log in, MyExcite records information about your location and displays local information. I live in Richmond, Virginia so the TV listings are for Richmond TV stations and the weather report lists Richmond weather conditions. If MyExcite would focus on more local information than this, I would find the service more useful. 

MyExcite tries to give you some ability to customize your site, but that ability is limited and inconsistent. It allows you to modify the color scheme of your site, but it doesn't let you modify everything -- some boxes and text stay the same color no matter what you do, especially an annoying gray box at the top of the page. This is frustrating considering my favorite web colors tend to be black, white, light blue and light green, and three of those colors (guess which ones) don't show up well on a light gray background. 

MyExcite divides up the web page into regions and gives you the power to set what information appears in what region. But it doesn't really let you customize the information itself. You can activate or deactivate certain types of information that you're not interested in -- such as sports -- but you can't go one step further and filter out information in categories you don't want. So while I can see the latest breaking news in the computer world, there's no way I can tell MyExcite to only display breaking news about OS/2.

An almost-but-not-quite-cool feature in MyExcite is the ability to link to the articles of your "favorite" columnists. When I first saw this feature, I was intrigued. I envisioned a method whereby you would enter the URL of your favorite columnist (Robert X. Cringely), and MyExcite would link to that URL, giving you one-click access to the rants and ravings of whichever your chosen lunatic is. 

Nope. Apparently, everyone has the same "favorite" columnist, which consist of Dave Barry and six or seven other guys I've never heard of. You can choose which ones are your "most favorite", and the others will be excluded, but you can't add any new ones to the list. 

A few other interesting notes, though: first of all, MyExcite has a "3d Weather report" that is a Java applet "optimized for the Pentium II". Essentially, you enter the location you want reported on and it will give a 5 day forecast using 3d graphics. It's pretty, and whether it was optimized for the Pentium II or not I was able to run it just fine in my OS/2 browser using my native OS/2 Java support.
 
Also, MyExcite has a rather complex network of chat rooms, and a rather elaborate Java-based chat program that ran without complication in Netscape/2. For those of you who like the idea of AOL-styled chat rooms, you'll like this feature. 

The problem with MyExcite is that it's aimed at the "newbie" -- someone with little or no experience with the World Wide Web -- with the expectation that they will stay newbies for the rest of their lives. This seems unrealistic at best, and regardless it rules out most OS/2 users, who for the most part have some passing familiarity with the World Wide Web. Honestly, if you have the technical skill to type "http://www.os2ezine.com" you probably don't need to use a portal as your home base -- though some of the information on the site can be useful, and you might want to check it once and a while to see what the weather will be, or what's on TV later that evening. 

Conclusions

If you're looking for a useful portal-like web site for OS/2 users, we already have a few. The OS/2 Supersite already does most of what MyExcite is trying to do, only with a focus on OS/2 -- it links us to a lot of information about OS/2. Similarly, the Mining Company's OS/2 site is another page that performs that function. 

Overall, I'm not impressed with portals, and I'm not impressed with MyExcite. It has its uses, just as any other information site does, but I don't see it as the next big thing. Which means, of course, that it probably will be. 

                         - * -

MyExcite
     by (http://www.excite.com/) Excite
     MSRP: Free

(wrightc@dtcweb.com) Christopher B. Wright is a technical writer in the Richmond, VA area, and has been using OS/2 Warp since January 95. He is also a member of Team OS/2.

***********************************

My Netscape	- by Chris Wenham

Summary: My Netscape is sizing up to be a formidable portal with some very nice features. But both the site and the browser needed to use it are both in beta testing phase, meaning that not only are several promised content areas missing, but you're liable to suffer a few crashes too. 

A strange thing happened on the way to the portal this week. When we began planning this roundup of Internet Portals we anticipated that we might have to skip Netscape's Netcenter, since its customization features were not yet available. But a few days ago Netscape started the first beta of My Netscape and we thought at first we'd have to change our plans at the last minute to include it in this week's review. But when we went to test it we discovered that My Netscape makes use of Javascript functions that aren't supported in the current Netscape 2.02 for OS/2. While you could set up an account, there wasn't any means of customizing the available content channels. So, the My Netscape review was scratched once more. But then, at the second to last minute, what should get posted to IBM's web site but the first public beta of Netscape Communicator for OS/2! With this, we could suddenly gain full access to My Netscape's customization features. The review was back on again, with barely a day to the deadline to spare. 

Since both the web site and the program needed to access it are in beta or "preview" stages, we cannot consider it as part of our Editor's Choice selection. What follows should be considered more of a "first looks" than a full review. When both products leave their testing stage, expect to see full follow-up reviews here in OS/2 e-Zine! 

Content and Features

Netscape has been in the news a lot these past few months, signing deals left and right to line up content and services for its debut into the Portal game. What it's showing at the time I write this review are the usual newsfeeds and a couple of very nifty gadgets, but not as much content as other portals currently offer. 

One extremely promising "gadget" is the address book -- a virtual Rolodex of names, addresses and phone numbers. What makes it so nifty is the fact that it can actually import and export address books with your favorite PIM -- including Lotus Organizer for OS/2. This is something I've never seen a web page do before. If you save your Organizer's address book in a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file, Communicator can actually upload it to Netcenter, which then reads the addresses within an adds them to your customized page. Likewise, it can also export your Netcenter address book to a file for importing back into Organizer or any other PIM that supports the CSV format. 

This import/export feature can also be found in the bookmark channel -- a section of your custom page that lists your favorite bookmarks. Netcenter can read a Netscape bookmark file and import the first 100 sites it finds. 

Gadgets included purely for gadget appeal include a fully functional calculator, believe it or not. Using a bit of Javascript wizardry, this simple calculator performs all of the basic tasks without needing to load a Java applet -- meaning there's no wait while a virtual machine gets started. 

For other content, Netscape has teamed up with Excite to provide some limited channels of specialized news and links, some of which are available now. In the Preferences set-up page there's an entire hierarchy of specialized channels geared towards all tastes, but all grayed-out, presumably to come online sometime in the future. 

For "buddy lists" or "pagers", Netscape has chosen AOL's Instant Messenger (AIM for short). Unfortunately if you follow the link to download AIM from Netcenter you won't be given the option of downloading the Java version that works in OS/2. The script that identifies your platform will tell you there's no version of AIM you can run, and sends you right back to where you came from. You can still use the Java version of AIM if you want to, but you'll have to download it from AOL's site, and not Netscape's. 

User Interface

For a web site, My Netscape sure acts like it wasn't. Channels and tools can be "minimized" and "maximized" by clicking on the toggle button in its title bar. This action is actually more like "rollup" and "rolldown", since the title bar remains visible and all of the channel panes below are shifted up. The only thing breaking the seamlessness of this feature and reminding you that it is a web page after all is the necessary reloading of the web page after each roll-up and roll-down. 

Also on each title bar is an 'X' button to close or delete the channel and a button for setting the channel's preferences. Like My Yahoo, each channel can be customized to fit your likes and dislikes as well as adding or deleting content. Click on the preferences button for the weather channel (not to be confused with the "Weather Channel" on cable TV) and you can tell it what cities you want weather reports for. 

Unfortunately we found that, unlike My Yahoo, the user cannot yet customize the colors My Netscape uses to display its channels. This was a setback for me, since the laptop I use dithers the color bars and makes the page look ugly. 

Conclusions

My Netscape is coming together quickly and looks to be a potential My Yahoo killer. Even as I write this, checking back reveals that they added a Notepad widget to go along with the Calculator. Apparently you can now jot down reminders and save them directly on your page! 

But the problems we found with it are its slim content and its pickiness about which browser you use. It's not surprising that Netscape wants you to use Navigator 3.0 or higher (and yes, we tried running Netscape for OS/2 with the "-3" switch, it didn't work). Hopefully by the time My Netscape completes its testing phase, so will have Communicator for OS/2. 

                         - * -

My Netscape
     by (http://home.netscape.com/) Netscape
     MSRP: Free

(chris@os2ezine.com) Chris Wenham is the Senior Editor for OS/2 e-Zine! -- a promotion from Assistant Editor which means his parking spot will now be wide enough to hold his bicycle and a trailer.

***********************************

My Yahoo	- by Chris Wenham

Summary: My Yahoo is the oldest, the fastest and still the best. While it works hard to accommodate the mainstream crowd, it still supports OS/2 users well both with content and OS/2 friendly Java embellishments. 

The first major Internet Portal, and the one all others seem to be copying, is My Yahoo. In recent years Yahoo has become practically a household name, even with those who don't own computers, as the company is not only chosen by the popular media as their poster child for the Internet age but also charms Wall Street with its recent profits. Yahoo has managed to funnel content and features into its portal well, presenting the widest range of services we've found so far. 

Privacy And Setting Up An Account

My Yahoo conveniently puts the whole processes of specifying an account name, password, personal information and basic interests on one page. While it doesn't need to know your name and address, it does require you to specify your birthday, gender, occupation, the industry you work in and the zip code you live in. These are used by Yahoo not only to customize content for you, as they claim, but also for the purpose of targeting you with advertisements. For the privacy conscious, Yahoo's (http://www.yahoo.com/docs/info/privacy.html) privacy policy, certified by TRUSTe, states that they do not share this information with anyone. 

The sign up process also requires you to enter a password question and answer, such as "what is my pet dog's name?" and "Spot". Should you forget your password, My Yahoo will ask this question and display the password if you supply the correct answer. This is different from other web services which usually only ask for a reminder phrase ("Same password as my e-mail" for example.) 

A pleasant bonus is that you only have to sign up once to get access to all of Yahoo's customizable features. E-mail, chat, message boards and everything else are automatically accessible with the same account name and password. And as you'd expect, your user name and password are stored in a cookie (which works only if you're using Netscape), so login is automatic whenever you visit My Yahoo or any of the other Yahoo services. 

Services

My Yahoo is not a boring place to be. There's a lot going on that ranges from news headlines, Television listings, stock market prices, latest album releases, health tips and more. In fact, we found it to be the leading service in content breadth. 

Like most portals, My Yahoo has a place for you to add your favorite bookmarks. Yahoo's intention is for this to become a replacement for the bookmark feature of your web browser, the justification being that you can then access your bookmarks on whatever computer you can get access to. What's disappointing about this feature is that there's no organization features. It'll sort the bookmarks alphabetically, but you can't create categories to file bookmarks under like you can in Netscape. 

The news feed is excellent and combines headlines from a variety of sources. Reuters, Associated Press, MSNBC and Ziff Davis are only a few of the news agencies to choose from and combine together. You can also select the topics that interest you, be it sports, music, film, business, technology or whatever. Yahoo does not link to other web sites for news, however. If it's displaying headlines from Ziff Davis, clicking on it will not take you to a Ziff Davis web site but to the article as it has been copied to Yahoo's site, complete with Yahoo's visual formatting. 

The television listings are comprehensive and cover practically the entire United States, taking into account both local broadcast stations and those pulled in by your cable TV provider. As long as you tell Yahoo your time zone, cable provider or location, it can display correct listings for you. 

Two useful features are the News Clipper and the Keyword Search. Both are forms of saved searches, meaning that if you have a set of keywords you search on frequently ("OS/2" or "Cats" or "Pink Floyd" for example), Yahoo can save these parameters and provide one-click access to them. With the News Clipper, keywords are used to scan the news archives for matching articles, published up to one week or three years into the past. Create a clipper for "Florida Fires" for example, and with one click on the front page you can get a list of all the most recent articles relating to the wildfires raging in Florida. This same concept works for the Keyword Searches, except that the search is performed on Yahoo's web site directory instead. 

Customization

The content in My Yahoo is divided up into sections such as news, TV listings, bookmarks, stock prices and so-on. They're displayed in one of two columns, stacked on top of each other according to the order you prefer. Each of these is usually customizable by clicking on the "Edit" button found in the section's title. 

Usually, when you customize something you're telling Yahoo what your interests are. If you want a sports scores channel or team calendar, you're telling Yahoo what sports teams you're interested in. Same goes for the stock price monitor, music releases 

One of the disappointments with My Yahoo's customization is with the TV listings. Although you can customize it enough to display the right channels and schedule for your area, you can't customize the channel order or default time period. On the My Yahoo front page you get convenient listings for the top 5 networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and PBS) during prime-time (8pm to 11pm), but you can't customize this to show other channels and other time periods. If your favorite channels are CNN, TNT and Discovery and you prefer to watch TV from 5 to 8pm then you'll have to pull up a full listing and navigate to the 5-to-8pm time slot manually, each time you want to see what's on. 

OS/2 Friendliness

My Yahoo was also the most OS/2 friendly of all the portals we tested. Yahoo not only has a good collection of OS/2 web sites in its directory, but it also has an OS/2 message board to discuss topics and get help in. Yahoo is also very platform neutral. Its real-time chat rooms use a Java client that runs well in Netscape for OS/2 and its pager or "buddy list" is also available in an OS/2 compatible Java version. What's convenient about Yahoo's pager, as opposed to AOL's comparable Instant Messenger or ICQ, is that the program is loaded, "installed" and run instantly from the web page, without needing you to unzip and install it yourself. All of your preferences and friends lists are kept on Yahoo's server. 

But Yahoo does not carry a lot of OS/2 related news. WarpCast is not one of their news feeds, and if you set up the News Ticker to keep track of the keywords "OS/2" and "Warp", you probably won't find much at all. Neither does its computer-tip-of-the-day or product review section seem to cover anything related to Warp. Fortunately, both of these services talk about hardware 50% of the time, meaning they're not altogether useless.  

Searching

Since Yahoo is already a well established web directory, that's what it defaults to whenever you use its search form. Yahoo does, however, have a partnership with AltaVista. Whenever a search fails to turn up anything on Yahoo, or you reach the end of Yahoo's results, you can jump straight into the results AltaVista has turned up on the same query.

E-Mail

Like Hotmail, Yahoo offers free, web managed e-mail accounts to anybody who wants one. While you can't access these e-mail accounts with a regular client such as PMMail or MR/2, the web interface is easy enough to get used to. It does mean, of course, that you'll be exposed to banner advertising at the same time. 

Yahoo e-mail has all of the features you'd expect from a decent e-mail client, including folders, signature files and filters. Your My Yahoo page will also display a notice whenever new mail arrives in your account. This is of course a full blown e-mail account, meaning that you can send or receive mail from anyone on the Internet, not just other My Yahoo users. 

Conclusions

My Yahoo won editor's choice for its sheer breadth of content, reasonable friendliness to OS/2 users and fast loading format. Like its parent web directory, this Portal is very light on graphics and resists using exotic HTML extensions. 

The only disappointments we found were with the awkward scheme it has for arranging the layout of the custom page (it's limited to the default 2-column view) and the tendency for your custom page to grow several screenfulls long. 

                         - * -

My Yahoo
     by (http://www.yahoo.com/) Yahoo
     MSRP: Free

(chris@os2ezine.com) Chris Wenham is the Senior Editor for OS/2 e-Zine! - a promotion from Assistant Editor which means his parking spot will now be wide enough to hold his bicycle and a trailer.

***********************************

Snap!	- by Lief Clennon

Summary: A nice try with some good news feeds, maybe it'll get better, but to an OS/2 user this is an alien landscape.

Snap is the first major portal from an Internet publishing company (C|Net) rather than a search engine. When I looked at it there were no customization features, but just before going to press a beta of "My Snap!" became available. Too late to write a full report on, I've discussed a little of what it offers later in this review. 

Homogenized

Since search engines have been overdone I decided to start with the more flamboyant features of a modern Internet Portal Service. Prominent on their list: chat. There was a page asking you to sign on, or click a button to create a new account. Seemed simple enough, but then you get the following message: 

"Please choose a Chat plug-in for your system from the list below. You will then be taken to a download page containing further instructions for downloading the proper software." 

The only available plug-ins were for Netscape under Windows 95, a note also mentioned that the Win3.X version was not yet available. This really isn't starting well. Maybe I should go back to the basics.
 
A search for simply "OS/2" pulled up a single category, and no hits from elsewhere in the database. Well, not too bad -- nearly three dozen items, including WarpCast, the SuperSite, and the e-Zine! In fact there were two entries for us -- identical links, but one had a capital E. Notable absences were Gary Hammer's (http://www.musthave.com/) OS/2 Must-Have Utilities, the (http://www.cincyteamos2.org/masterupdate.html) Master Updates List, and the (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/) Hobbes archive. Also, despite having (http://www2.indelible-blue.com/scott/ibnews.nsf) Indelible Blue Ink (Indelible Blue's newsletter), OS/2 mail-order giant (http://www.indelible-blue.com/ibapps/webnav.nsf/) Indelible Blue itself was not listed. 

Pressing ever onward...

Back to the less run-of-the-mill functions. Software Downloads looked like as good a place to start as any. There was a little more diversity here than in the chat feature -- you have a platform option. "Any", "Windows", "DOS", "Mac". And, "Special: Download Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01". Well, sometimes there's gold beneath the surface, so I dug through the categories a bit. 

There were a smattering of Java applets, ready to drop into your web site. Iron pyrite, maybe; not gold. The next feature on the list: Classifieds. A "Computers" category was boldly displayed, and among the many subcategories was "PC Software." 

But unfortunately, the search engine just didn't cut it. There was nowhere to enter a specific query -- you could only select from categories for manufacturer and product category. "IBM" and "Operating Systems" showed several copies of OS/2 for sale. If I'd had the money, I probably would have snagged Warp Server at $195. However, it would be difficult to find anything else of interest without the ability to type a search string. 

As an aside, there were notify-list options within the classified search. I hadn't seen any reference to buddy lists or what-have-you anywhere else on Snap -- but then I glanced at the URL, and discovered that I was actually on (http://www.classifieds2000.com/) Classifieds 2000. Ironically, the outside contractor has better technology than the main site.

My Snap!

Entering beta phase too late to review here in full was Snap!'s attempt at mimicking the customization features of the other Portals. At best, this feature was a mediocre copy of what Yahoo is doing, although there's nothing to say it won't improve before final release. There's no way to customize the layout -- you're stuck with whatever arrangement Snap! decides -- no way to customize the colors, and the number of features besides news is small. What good can be said about it is that it has an excellent range of news feeds to choose from, larger than any of the other Portals tested in this roundup.

Another flaw I noticed was that even after choosing a name and password to access My Snap! with, you still had to sign up with another name and password to access the Chat rooms. I don't know why the two services couldn't share the same database of users, but then again this might just be temporary until the Beta phase has ended. 

Breaking point

In a last resort to find some OS/2 relevant content I did a quick search of Online Shopping. A few deals on DB/2 that could easily be gotten elsewhere -- and in fact most of the listings were directly filched from (http://www.insight.com) Insight or (http://www.software.net/) software dot net. At this point, I pretty much gave up. Desperate for anything positive to say about Snap!, I searched for a few of my own nontechnical interests. I'm happy to say that their (http://www.snap.com/directory/category/0,16,home-15849,00.html) Jethro Tull category has only one entry fewer than (http://www.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Music/Artists/By_Genre/Rock_and_Pop/Jethro_Tull/) Yahoo!'s, with some non-overlapping sites. They're even equal if you discount Yahoo!'s listing of the alt.music.jethro-tull newsgroup. 

All in all: Snap! doesn't have much to offer that isn't done better elsewhere, and it has next to nothing of specific interest to OS/2 users. I'll be sticking to Yahoo! and AltaVista, myself.  

                         - * -

Snap!
     by (http://www.snap.com/) C|Net
     MSRP: Free

(liefc@os2ezine.com) Lief Clennon is a computer hobbyist and Team OS/2 member currently residing in Albuquerque, NM. He can usually be found badgering his friends on IRC.

***********************************

First Looks at Netscape Communicator for OS/2 4.04, Beta 1	- by Chris Wenham

Summary: Bloated and buggy, crash prone and slow, by golly how we love thee. Its the year's most anticipated public beta release for OS/2.

It's here.

All those who laid their bets on either the Warpzilla or Warpscape crews having a port of Mozilla completed before IBM released a beta of Communicator should be crying in their beer right now, because lo and behold, on Thursday July 30th, 1998, a full beta did indeed go public. 

After a few limping starts (the file on IBM's site was corrupted until later in the evening) most of us with a WarpCast subscription or a careful eye to the newsgroups and mailing lists were downloading and installing the new beta. Amazingly enough, most haven't had any problems with this part, as long as you read the Read.Me file and pay attention to what you should and shouldn't do.

The new browser (okay, so it's new to us,) while originally designed and developed by Netscape has been ported to OS/2 mostly by IBM. It features a swanky new interface and, most importantly of all, an updated HTML rendering engine. For the first time, OS/2 users have a native way to read HTML 4.0 pages with style sheets, layers and other exotic extensions. It not only opens many new doors previously left locked to OS/2 users, but also ushers in better ways of presenting and organizing information than could be achieved with the HTML supported by the old Navigator 2.02. 

In addition to the browser, the Communicator suite also includes an improved mail and newsreader (Collabra), plus a "WYSIWYG" web page editor called Composer. All four are integrated nicely, accessible from either a floating palette or one docked in the bottom status bar of each component. Their settings can all be accessed from a common preferences dialog (meaning you can set up your mail client while in the browser, or vice versa), and the suite can also keep track of multiple users all sharing the same machine -- giving you the power to separate mail accounts, bookmarks and other preferences.

With the revamp of these components also comes a lot of little changes that ought to please. For example, in the mail client it's now a lot easier to set up a filter -- no more messing around with undocumented files in the System Editor. You can also now put your favorite web sites right on the main toolbar (where the fixed directory buttons used to be) for extra fast access. 

But keep in mind that this is a beta and it shows. The program is slow and has a tendency to crash. While testing it we noticed excessive screen repaints (especially with pages that contain forms) as well as poor color management and graphics display for those with 256-color screens (making it's usefulness limited on laptop computers). IBM recommends that you leave the Java Just-In-Time compiler switched off (it is by default) and do not choose to import your settings from Netscape 2.02. 

Something else you'll notice after starting up the browser for the first time and going through Netscape's registration process is that you can't install a VeriSign key. It may seem to install, but trying to use it to confirm your identity will fail.

At least the waiting is over, the fears soothed and the itches scratched. If you choose to try out this beta, make sure you also send your bug reports in to IBM. And once you do that, try to send some thanks along to their programmers too.  Expect a full review of the entire Communicator suite for OS/2 here in OS/2 e-Zine! once the final version is released.

                         - * -

Communicator for OS/2 4.04, Preview
     by (http://www.netscape.com/) Netscape
     download from (http://service5.boulder.ibm.com/pcpd.nsf/ocomm40+home) IBM (EXE, 7M)
     Registration: Free

(chris@os2ezine.com) Chris Wenham is the Senior Editor for OS/2 e-Zine! - a promotion from Assistant Editor which means his parking spot will now be wide enough to hold his bicycle and a trailer.

***********************************

First Looks and Nifty Gadgets	- by OS/2 e-Zine! Staff

First Looks and Nifty Gadgets brings you reviews of the new and novel.  In each issue we take a look at what's just hitting the streets and some tiny, but tried and true products that are still helping people be as productive as possible.

     In this issue we look at: Tyra/2 1.10 | File Browser Beta 1

Tyra/2 1.10

OS/2 is notorious for having a long, complicated and awkward to edit configuration file, also known as CONFIG.SYS for short. It's usually poorly sorted, cryptic and worst of all it's an absolutely essential factor in tuning the performance of your PC. So it's with relief that you can now get a convenient front-end for this spaghetti mix, one that categorizes, labels and gives an easy point-and-click way of editing and tuning your PC's CONFIG.SYS. It's called Tyra/2 and is very similar to another utility called Warp-n-Go. 

Tyra/2 uses a notebook interface, splitting the CONFIG.SYS's settings into several intuitive categories. With it you can increase the cache of your HPFS drive with a few clicks, rearrange the order of your LIBPATH and switch on Joliet support for your CD-ROM drive. 

In addition to providing a convenient way to edit your config, Tyra/2 also includes fairly decent documentation and a utility for searching your various PATH statements for nonexistent directories.  

Tyra/2 1.10
     by (http://software.freepage.de/poggensee/) Oliver Poggensee
     download from (ftp://ftp.bmtmicro.com/bmtmicro/tyra110e.zip) BMT Micro (ZIP, 446k)
     Registration: US$25

                         - * -

File Browser Beta 1

File Browser is one of the niftiest of nifty gadgets that we've come across in a while. This tiny program, topping out at just over 200K, is a complete file browser and viewer tucked inside a Web browser-like frame. It's minimal user interface features a location field, like a web browser's, which is just a few keystrokes away from a local file on your hard drive or a remote file on a web server somewhere. Type in "D:\files\article.txt" and it'll display the file just as quickly as if you'd typed "http://www.os2ezine.com/". You can point and click your way through your hard drive's contents, move, copy and delete files, view a wide range of graphics files and more.

Also like a web browser, you can move forwards and backwards through your browsing history using either the obvious buttons on the toolbar or picking from a drop-down list. While it has its own built-in viewers for graphics files, it makes use of Web Explorer's HTML rendering engine for displaying web pages. Amazingly enough, it claims to support Netscape plug-ins too. For future versions, the author has planned to make use of the Mozilla rendering engine instead of Web Explorer's.

File Browser's compactness and versatility make this a must have utility. You can think of it as all of the good ideas that came from Microsoft's efforts to merge the browser with the operating system, but without all of that dumb overhead.

File Browser Beta 1
     by (http://www.datacomm.ch/~cbratschi/) Christoph Bratschi
     download from the (http://www.datacomm.ch/~cbratschi/fbrowser/fbrowser.zip) File Browser Web page (ZIP, 185k)
     Registration: Free until first non-beta version

                         - * -

That's it for this issue.  Tune in next time for more reviews of neat gadgets and first looks at new OS/2 tools.

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July 16, 1998 Reader Survey Results

OS/2 users have often been spurned by large software vendors, even those who produce their client software products for free.  While some companies (such as Netscape, Adobe and others) realize that for a client to become ubiquitous, it needs to be available to all computer users, others (such as RealNetworks) seem to feel that providing clients for the few, dominant platforms is "good enough".

We have heard comments on the subject of a native OS/2 RealAudio and/or RealVideo player ranging from, "give us one now!" to, "who cares? MP3 is the future."  To find out how OS/2ers really feel about RealNetworks' products, in our last issue we asked for your opinions about "RealAudio Support for OS/2".

Answers to our survey were accepted from July 16th until July 29th.  We had a total of 1,300 replies to our questionnaire with 117 "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 1,183 valid replies.  The results were as follows:

Do you use a (http://www.realnetworks.com/) RealAudio Player in a Win-OS/2 session?

Originally there were instructions to run the RealAudio player v3.0 in a Win-OS/2 session, which worked (with some tinkering) for most people.  However, newer versions of the RealAudio and RealVideo players were harder to make cohabitate with OS/2.  Eventually some enterprising souls provided the magic instructions to make these newer versions of RealNetworks' players run in Win-OS/2 too.

Is all the hassle worth it?  Not according to our readers.  The majority of them (64.8%) do not currently use a RealAudio player in a Win-OS/2 session.  However, the other group (the 35.1% that do use a RealAudio player under OS/2) are probably more significant.  Given the fact that OS/2 is an unsupported platform and that there are some obstacles to getting RealAudio players working, it is a testament to RealAudio's popularity that more than one in every three OS/2ers has this software installed.

Do you want a native RealAudio or RealVideo player for OS/2?

Another testament to RealAudio's popularity is the overwhelming desire for a native OS/2 player.  Nearly all our readers (89.8%) told us they want such a product.  Maybe RealNetworks will take notice of this statistic and finally extend a little help to the OS/2 developers who have offered to work on the port.

Would you pay for a native RealAudio or RealVideo player for OS/2?

If RealNetworks did allow a native OS/2 client to be produced, the developer would probably find a market for the product.  More than half of OS/2 users (56.6%) would actually pay for a RealAudio or RealVideo player.  Possibly some extra value could be added to a native OS/2 port -- were one to be developed -- to make it more similar to the commercial versions on other platforms, and therefore worth paying for.

Do you prefer "open" formats such as streaming MP3 or commercial formats such as RealAudio and RealVideo?

Surprisingly, considering the great amount of desire for an OS/2 RealAudio player, our readers actually seem to disapprove of the RealAudio proprietary standard.  Most of them (82.2%) said they would prefer an open standard streaming audio or video format, such as MPEG Layer 3 (MP3).  Fortunately, players for the MP3 format exist for OS/2 now.  Unfortunately, RealNetworks currently dominates the Internet so very few sites actually "broadcast" in the MP3 format.

                         - * -

That's it for this issue.  Don't forget to fill out this issue's questionnaire and check back on August 1st for complete results.




                         Complete July 16, 1998 Survey Results

Do you use a (http://www.realnetworks.com/) RealAudio Player in a Win-OS/2 session?

Category							Count		Percentage
Yes								415			35.1%
No								766			64.8%
I do not understand the question	2			0.2%
TOTAL							1,183		100.1%


Do you want a native RealAudio or RealVideo player for OS/2?

Category							Count		Percentage
Yes								1,062		89.8%
No								51			4.3%
I am not sure						69			5.8%
I do not understand the question	1			0.1%
TOTAL							1,183		100.0%


Would you pay for a native RealAudio or RealVideo player for OS/2?

Category							Count		Percentage
Yes								670			56.6%
No								234			19.8%
I am not sure						277			23.4%
I do not understand the question	2			0.2%
TOTAL							1,183		100.0%


Do you prefer "open" formats such as streaming MP3 or commercial formats such as RealAudio and RealVideo?

Category								Count		Percentage
I prefer open standards				973			82.2%
I prefer RealAudio and/or RealVideo		91			7.7%
I am not sure							110			9.3%
I do not understand the question		9			0.8%
TOTAL								1,183		100.0%

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August 1/98 Reader Survey

Have you ever wondered what your fellow OS/2 users are doing with their computers and how they're doing it?

Each issue, OS/2 e-Zine! takes the pulse of the OS/2 community on a different topic and presents you with the results.

Just fill in the form at http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n11/survey2.htm and check our next issue to find out how "normal" you really are!

                         This issue's topic: Warpstock

                         - * -

Do you have an idea that you think would make a (feedback@os2ezine.com) good survey question?

Don't forget to check out the complete results of last issue's survey, in this issue!

Notes:
1. Only one entry per reader will be counted.
2. All questions must be answered to be counted.
3. Information must be received on or before August 14, 1998.

Complete results of this survey will be printed in our next issue (August 16, 1998).

***********************************

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Corporate Sponsors

(http://www.bmtmicro.com/) BMT Micro
Your complete source for over 175 of the best OS/2 shareware applications available.  Drop by today and check out our WWW catalog or download the .INF version.

(http://www.ChipChat.com/os2ezine) ChipChat Technology Group
ChipChat produces excellent 32-bit OS/2 software for wireless text paging and state-of-the-art multimedia Sound Cards for Micro Channel PS/2 computers.

(http://www.indelible-blue.com/) Indelible Blue
Indelible Blue, a mail order company, provides OS/2 software and hardware solutions to customers worldwide.

(http://www.mensys.nl/indexuk.html) Mensys
The one place to go in Europe for all OS/2 Warp software.

(http://www.prominic.com/) Prominic Technologies, Inc.
On-line sales & solutions for VisualAge, DB2, OS/2 Warp, Workspace on Demand, Notes/Domino, AIX Firewall, and Net.Commerce (design/hosting).  The best deals on IBM and Lotus software and hardware (PCs, Servers, and RS/6000s) -- with OS/2 preloads!

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Dramatically improve performance on your OS/2 system now with the patented priority scanning logic and visual priority identification of Priority Master II.

(http://www.stardock.com/) Stardock Systems
Providing quality software for the home and office.

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Copyright 1998   -   Falcon Networking
ISSN 1203-5696