Other Operating System Software - Product Reviews

HueseyinL8 - (December 22, 2002) When I worked for GE in Germany we called IBM internally "Idioten Bauen Maschinen" which means "Idiots Build Machines". One could discuss about IBM's abilities to combine advanced techniques with a technology orientated overall Management but OS/2 is in any way advanced technology at its best. Most of the technologies now advertised by other companies or glorified by independent software developers joining a group or organization to improve OS evolution have their origin in IBM's OS/2 Warp. It is a matter of fact that OS/2 introduced techniques like IFS (Installable File Systems), SOM-Framework (Symbolic Object Modelling), DSOM (the same in "dynamic") and Voice Type -which find their "reinve

Mark_p - (November 19, 2003) As mentioned in other articles OS/2 is still available from IBM on a subscription basis of a retail package from eComstation.com. There is an avid group of users that are starting to port OSS to OS/2 (Mozilla, Thuderbird/Firebird available now, with OpenOffice on its way), it plays nicely with other OS's on a network and it is still usefull today.Fix Pack 15, updated TCP/IP stack and updated drivers are readily available. So if you want to be free of all that win32 crap that's floating around in cyberspace this is one OS that can do it. Oh Btw "out of the box" with no firewall it is more sure than XP when surfing the internet-not bad for an OS that was released in 1996.......

egmccann - (September 23, 2003) Few user interfaces have matched the power and flexibility of OS/2's Workplace Shell. Windows 2000 and XP are just now catching up to OS/2's stability. And few, if any, OSes have the built in capability of running multiple "client" OSes (well, DOS or CLI versions) at once, out of the box. Today's speech recognition (AND Navigation!) are just catching up to what OS/2 v4 had, out of the box, years ago. Yet today's hardware has left the boxed version of OS/2 Warp behind. There's no USB support, little perhipheral support, software is there but requires a lot of looking (or money) - unless you get a "modernized" version, such as that available through Software Choice or eComStation. If you w

Mark_p - (11/19/2003) As mentioned in other articles OS/2 is still available from IBM on a subscription basis of a retail package from eComstation.com. There is an avid group of users that are starting to port OSS to OS/2 (Mozilla, Thuderbird/Firebird available now, with OpenOffice on its way), it plays nicely with other OS's on a network and it is still usefull today.Fix Pack 15, updated TCP/IP stack and updated drivers are readily available. So if you want to be free of all that win32 crap that's floating around in cyberspace this is one OS that can do it. Oh Btw "out of the box" with no firewall it is more sure than XP when surfing the internet-not bad for an OS that was released in 1996.......

egmccann - (09/23/2003) Few user interfaces have matched the power and flexibility of OS/2's Workplace Shell. Windows 2000 and XP are just now catching up to OS/2's stability. And few, if any, OSes have the built in capability of running multiple "client" OSes (well, DOS or CLI versions) at once, out of the box. Today's speech recognition (AND Navigation!) are just catching up to what OS/2 v4 had, out of the box, years ago. Yet today's hardware has left the boxed version of OS/2 Warp behind. There's no USB support, little perhipheral support, software is there but requires a lot of looking (or money) - unless you get a "modernized" version, such as that available through Software Choice or eComStation. If you want to make some older hardware (say, a Pentium 75-233) useful, this would be great. Set it up as an email station and never worry about a virus again - and a HPFS formatted disk can be huge. But if you want to play with it on the latest-and-greatest hardware, be prepared for hard times and disappointment - at least with this release.

HueseyinL8 - (12/22/2002) When I worked for GE in Germany we called IBM internally "Idioten Bauen Maschinen" which means "Idiots Build Machines". One could discuss about IBM's abilities to combine advanced techniques with a technology orientated overall Management but OS/2 is in any way advanced technology at its best. Most of the technologies now advertised by other companies or glorified by independent software developers joining a group or organization to improve OS evolution have their origin in IBM's OS/2 Warp. It is a matter of fact that OS/2 introduced techniques like IFS (Installable File Systems), SOM-Framework (Symbolic Object Modelling), DSOM (the same in "dynamic") and Voice Type -which find their "reinvention" in todays modern environments- about ten years ago. Skipping our natural obligation to attack Microsoft we can move a little bit further and focus on one of todays most promising technologies called GNOME. GNOME (GNU Network Object Modelling Environment) is actually the most advanced desktop environment from the programmers view leaving KDE and other predecessors far behind but looking at it on the source level and at its structure it is a XWindows version of OS/2's WPS. OS/2 itself has all the common desktop elements that one could expect from a modern environment but the most disappointing fact about the last 6 years in OS/2 history is that it has been abandoned by its users ISV's and its own fathers as a return for its stability and advance.