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From: burton@parcvax.Xerox.COM (Philip M. Burton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: A different View of the value of OS/2 - it's better than UN
Message-ID: <505@parcvax.Xerox.COM>
Date: Thu, 17-Sep-87 14:32:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: parcvax.505
Posted: Thu Sep 17 14:32:05 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Sep-87 01:31:11 EDT
References: <494@parcvax.Xerox.COM> <713@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: burton@parcvax.xerox.com.UUCP (Philip M. Burton)
Organization: Xerox PARC
Lines: 44

In article <713@cup.portal.com> Isaac_K_Rabinovitch@cup.portal.com writes:
>
>I thought the late lamented ATT UNIX PC did a lot to deal with the
>problems of the computerphobic user.  Burton might reply, yes, but not
>enough, U*x is just *too* complicated, and he might be right.  Anyway,
>we'll never know, since this machine was never properly marketted or
>supported.

The world is not rational. If AT&T did a poor job karketing the UNIX PC,
well, that's life in the big city. 


>A lot of people are not convinced that the OS/2 "DOS Box" can ever work,
>due to the large amount of "poorly behaved" MS-DOS software it would have
>to run.  The merits of OS/2 should probably be considered independent of its
>ability to run PC software.

f OS/2 can't run the old software, well gee, then Microsoft and Ashton-Tate
and everyone else will just have to upgrade.  They'll cry all the way to
the bank!  But the user will get multi-tasking and more memory.  Users
have been screaming about that for years now. 

>The thought of a 20 meg disk with no directory hierarchy is pretty frightening.

It sure is, but it's also reality.  And, most people don't bak up, until after
they have had a crash.  That's why they need a simple, robust file system,
not something that requires fsck (sounds obscene!!) to clean up,
and complex mount/umount commands to use floppies.


I'm honestly surprised at the amount of discussion my original posting has
generated.  I've also gotten some private mail, mostly complementary.
(Perhaps people can't appear to agree with me publicly.)

The real deciding factor will be the support from the major third party
vendors.  How many of them are going to support OS/2, and how many
are going to support UNIX (or have up to now).  Remember that Joe User
buys an application, and then gets the hardware and OS to enable that
application.

-- 
Philip Burton       burton@parcvax.COM   ...!hplabs!parcvax!burton
Xerox Corp.         preferred path: burton.osbunorth@xerox.COM
408 737 4635   ... usual disclaimers apply ...