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From: tholen@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (David Tholen)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms,comp.os.os2.misc
Subject: Re: Query:  Which would you recommend?  Windows?  or OS2 w/ PM?
Message-ID: <9505@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
Date: 22 Sep 90 00:50:25 GMT
References: <4227@rex.cs.tulane.edu> <624@ncratl.Atlanta.NCR.COM>
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Organization: University of Hawaii
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In article <624@ncratl.Atlanta.NCR.COM>, bnathan@ncratl.Atlanta.NCR.COM (Bob Nathan) writes:
 
> How about because DOS programs work under WIN and DONT under compatibility
> box?  (n.b. this from a guy who just had his disk trashed by WIN!?  what am
> I saying?) (At least OS/2 never trashed my disk.)

Please be careful with blanket statements like this.  I have many, many
DOS programs that work just fine in DOS mode (a.k.a. the compatibility box).
The OS/2 documentation clearly spells out which programs are most likely to
fail in DOS mode, such as communications programs, but I'd like to note that
ProComm works just fine in DOS mode.  True, I have encountered DOS programs
that do fail in DOS mode, but they're in the minority.

Incidentally, I believe that the compatibility of the "compatibility box"
will be improved in OS/2 version 2.0, which will utilize the virtual 8086
capabilities of the 80386 processor.  At least ill-behaved DOS programs
won't bring down the whole system, as they can under version 1.X, which
has to put the processor into real mode to run DOS programs.