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From: cmdbyk@pmvax.weeg.uiowa.edu (Karl Boyken)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
Subject: Re: OS/2 2.0 is here!
Message-ID: <5997@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>
Date: 10 May 91 13:50:34 GMT
References: <q18gr0f@rpi.edu> <1991May8.224116.11897@herald.usask.ca> <5978@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> <1498@caslon.cs.arizona.edu>
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In article <1498@caslon.cs.arizona.edu>, merrill@cs.arizona.edu (Darren J. Merrill) writes...

>I think the analogy you are implying is offbase.  MCA "failed" because
>it forced Joe user to buy (sometimes) expensive and relatively unavail-
>able hardware (MCA incompatibility with ISA).  

You can run OS/2 2.0 on an 8088 machine?  On a 286 machine?  What percentage
of PCs in use today are 386DX or 486 machines?

>What, what did they say... something like $150 for OS/2 2.0 (education
>discount less than that).  What did you pay for Windows?  $80? Not to 
>mention DOS (which comes with systems anyway).  I think $60 dollars for a
>much much more stable OS/Environment is nothing to the user that is
>paying $3000 for a quick 386.  Watch, I bet they start bundling it with new
>systems just like Windows.

And Windows and DOS will probably start being bundled together and priced
even lower.  I don't think Windows pricing and marketing are locked in
concrete.

>So when Windows ver 3.0 came out, you didn't have to reinstall Windows? and
>all the non-3.0 apps?  Come on.

I didn't have to reinstall my whole system.  My DOS apps stayed put.

>OS/2 2.0 runs Windows apps => if you write Windows app, you automatically
>have an "OS/2" app.  Sure it might not take advantage of the 32 bit OS,
>but it still works.

So where's the incentive for a developer to write an app just for OS/2?  And 
if OS/2 doesn't have apps that distinguish it from Windows, that make users 
want or need to buy OS/2, then why buy OS/2, when you can get by with 
Windows?  Sure, you can argue technical superiority, but if everyone were
interested only in that, we'd all have something different on or under our
desks than PCs.

And if someone wants a superior OS, they can buy Unix or Xenix now, with
the bonus of greater portability if they ever change hardware.  If you buy
OS/2, then at least for the near future, you are locked into IBM.  And we've
all seen IBM's track record of yanking the rug out from under its captured
markets to force them to upgrade to something incompatible.

    ** _My_ views, no one else's--except those I plagiarize. **
Karl Boyken, Project Analyst          | "It's so easy to slip, it's
State Health Registry of Iowa         |  so easy to fall and let your
Iowa City, IA                         |  memory drift into nothing
Internet: cmdbyk@pmvax.weeg.uiowa.edu |  at all." -- Lowell George