| Results from our November 16th Survey | - by Chris Wenham |

Chris Wenham is the Editor-In-Chief of OS/2 e-Zine! -- a promotion from Senior Editor which means he now takes all the blame. Related Articles Where do you get support? Forced into Windows? What browser? Future of software? Contact OS/2 e-Zine!
| Summary: The results of our November 16th 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 16th 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%

Copyright © 1998 - Falcon Networking | ISSN 1203-5696
| December 1, 1998