Oh man, Perry ... don't even get me started on OS/2 and IBM's major marketing snafu!! I just wrote a big long reply to your last post, but somehow it got screwed up when I sent it and only your quoted post went thru, so let me try again. You're right about OS/2 being more stable and way better than anything that MS had at the time. What was code-named "Chicago" before it came out? Was that WinNT or Win95? Anyway, OS/2 2.1 came out way, *way* before either one of them and it was wonderful!! I have a great t-shirt that I got at the Spring '94 Comdex that shows OS/2's logo and a picture of the Chicago skyline and it says "OS/2. Been there. Done That." <g> Gotta love it!

The only reason that MS won that particular OS war was not because of any great marketing strategy that they possesed, it was because IBM totally blew it when it came to marketing OS/2. I think that if IBM had flexed their marketing muscle just a teeny little bit, PC's would be way different today ... MS did not have the power then that they have now and IBM would've wiped up if they had had any vision at all.

There were plenty of us back then complaining about IBM's lack of enthusiasm for OS/2, but it did no good. We were a vocal bunch, very much like us VFP'ers are now. And so, a great OS died a slow death. It's very much like MS's lack of marketing for VFP ... y'all should be able to relate to that and where that leads to (or should I, say doesn't lead to <g>) ... uh oh, I don't want to start another "Fox is d***" thread!! <bg>

I still use OS/2 2.1 on an old Gateway 486/33. I use it primarily for working on a few FPDOS apps that I still maintain. I just can't bring myself to trash my Gateway ... maybe I'm sentimental, but it's kinda where I got my start in the PC biz. <g>

-Bonnie


>It was a while ago that I read the book. OS2 was more stable at that point in time because not too much work had begun on Windows yet.
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>If I recall correctly, the big reason for the split was B Gates wanted something very graphical and processor intensive. 386s had just come out. One of the biggest advantages of the 386 over the 286, was that there were some very severe bugs in the 286. BG wanted to ignore the 286 and develop Windows for the 386 only.
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>He knew that if they tried to be backwards compatible with the 286 there would be hugh headaches. IBM found this out. Spending significant amount of time and code to be backwards compatible. The big exec at IBM didn't want to go back on his word. He had given a speech to a bunch of big IBM customers and told them that they wouldn't wast their money if they bought a bunch of 286s. At the time IBM was also a big PC hardware manufacturer also.
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>PF
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>>The result of the bickering was that IBM split the codebase and IBM got OS/2 and MS got WinNT Workstation, right?
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>>Though to contradict your statement of IBM's ineptness, OS/2 seemed to be the best most stable OS at the time. MS managed to win out through marketing and a better business strategy. Are there any details on how they managed to outmuscle IBM in getting computer vendors to preinstall Windows on new systems?