OS/2

[Calum]

This should really have gone in 'other operating systems' but since there's no forum for Sun, or OS/2 or anything minor, i'm putting it her.
What i want to know is, a lot of people are saying this and that about Windows, but what's our point of view on OS/2? It's in a unique position, being the only NonMicrosoft Microsoft OS i know of.
Also, is OS/2 still available? and software for it? If so how and where, and does it cost?

[ January 21, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[voidmain]

OS/2 is dead.  I have OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 if you want it. We used to use it extensively at my last place of work, eventually migrated off to NT Workstation.  I never had a high opinion of it, although in it's day it would have been far superior to Win*. One could argue that it still is, but it's dead. I always made the smart ass remark that "OS/2" = "half an OS".

[Centurian]

Hey,

Os/2 can be gotten at your local software store or online at www.ibm.com and it is expensive. In most cases it is more expensive than Windows. It also offers more for the business environment than windows.

Later
Centurian

[voidmain]

Oh, and you can run "WinOS2" which is Win 3.1.  Got any good Win 3.1 apps?    But OS/2 started out as a joint effort between MS and IBM. MS screwed IBM on this one too.

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by Centurian:
Hey,

Os/2 can be gotten at your local software store or online at www.ibm.com and it is expensive. In most cases it is more expensive than Windows. It also offers more for the business environment than windows.

Later
Centurian

Yeah, show me a business that is actually going to use it.

[Centurian]

quote:Originally posted by VoidMain:



Yeah, show me a business that is actually going to use it.

Hey VoidMain,

My wife works at an auto lighting factory. They make lights for all makes and models of new vehicles. The first time I went into their offices I found it quite interesting that they were and still are using OS/2 Warp 4.

Personally I have OS/2 Warp 3 but I dont care much for it.

Later
Centurian

[voidmain]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a bad OS (even though I don't care much for it). And I am sure there are people still using it but MS really has the monopoly and I don't know of anybody developing for OS/2. I'm sure there are still people using it. I don't believe it's going to make any sort of comeback.

[Centurian]

Hey,

I doubt it will make a come back either but some  business's at least in this area use it. The factory my wife works for is owned buy the Japanese. My understanding is that any updates that they require come directly from Japan. I can only guess that the Japanese are using their own people to support the OS exclusively for their factories.

Later
Centurian

[voidmain]

Hopefully they keep using it and IBM keeps supporting it.  I thought IBM had already dropped it completely but if they are still selling it....  

I was the last one in my old company to get rid of it.  I had a distributed processing system that ran on 30 OS/2 Warp 3 machines. The vendor ported their code to WinNT so I was able to get rid of OS/2 and move to WinNT, although I would have preferred to go the full step to Linux I couldn't get the vendors to port their code at that time.  They eventually ported to Solaris and all processing was then able to be done on one large Sun server.

We had to write all the automated processing in house. On OS/2 we use REXX and VX-REXX.  Windows had no comparable language built in so I ended up porting the REXX code to Perl and using Activestate Perl.

All along I kept dreaming of how much easier it would have been to do everything on Linux (sigh).

[BoogerHead]

Granted it is OLD...but how often did you see OS/2 crash?  As compared to NT?  It was an incredible product for its day...too bad.

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by BoogerHead:
Granted it is OLD...but how often did you see OS/2 crash?  As compared to NT?  It was an incredible product for its day...too bad.

Actually it crashed quite often.  I recall lots of "TRAP E" and "TRAP D" messages and memory leaks (mainly Software vendors fault on this one). It definately had the "smell" of Microsoft. Of course I had already been into *NIX when I started with OS/2 so OS/2 didn't have much of a chance. OS/2 feels like a Microsoft operating system, like in the Win 3.1 era (granted better than MS).  I got pretty in depth with OS/2 but never really liked it. Linux already had my heart.

[ January 23, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[Calum]

The reason i asked, is because i downloaded a program called webwrite which looked like a graphical html editor that i hadn't heard of, and it turns out that it runs on os/2.
I just looked at the ibm site and they want US$284 for the newest os/2warp4!!!!!!!!
Well, i spotted a second hand copy of OS/2 in Sydney last year, for AUS$15 which i wish i had bought now!!
I just thought, what with all the 2nd hand bits floating around these days at dirt cheap prices, i could set up a machine built from old bits for next to nothing, solely for wordprocessing and internet use (because as we all know, the internet is as slow as a clapped out old amiga anyway) And i thought, that i could run win3.11 and old 8 bit programs on it, which might be free now due to being abandonware.
Plus, being a huge fan of master system/megadrive/nes et c, i have emulators which run games for those machines, in DOS, if OS/2 can handle that then fine (because God knows windows can't! sometimes i think they make DOS run so bad nowadays to try and kill it off).
Then i thought, aha! if ibm have brought out an OS that runs win3 applications, plus its own stuff (eg webwrite, my free but useless download) then that would be a lot better, i could even dual boot it with linux on a 486 or P1 maybe... I've never used OS/2 before, and i don't think i have used win3 either, being on macs only at that time...
Well, the buggers are shooting themselves in the head asking for US$284 for it. Is there a way around it? An older version available cheap somewhere? Is it legal to sell yr old copies of OS/2 on if you no longer have it installed yrself?

[ January 23, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[voidmain]

I have a few boxed sets of both Red and Blue boxes of OS/2 Warp 3 but like Microsoft I don't think you are allowed to "re-sell" them.  I have to tell you, I really think it would be a waste of your time, and I doubt you would like it, and since it's all but dead ($284 should tell you they don't want to support it anymore).

[Calum]

Why don't they just drop it then? they must think there's a share of the market for them if they're doing it at all. Maybe their price is based on M$ prices. They think they're in direct competition with XP!
I heard from numerous people that they had stopped supporting it, and it looks from their site, like they only started again a year or two ago, although i wouldn't really know. Why? if they don't want to do it. But then IBM are probably the  most confusingly motivated company in the IT/computer/Telecom industry after all.