Re: Free OS/400

["Simon Coulter" <shc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Nina,

You wrote:
>i didn't write any letters to ibm, but in the mid 90's we were on the 
>microsoft bandwagon.  and i couldn't even begin to explain why, it seemed 
>like everyone was doing it.  so that was the place to be.  i knew about 
>os/2 but it wasn't where the business comunity was.  kinda like mac's....

So you blindly followed the mass of lemmings rather than excerise some 
technical discretion and look for alternatives?  Just because your 
customers may have been using Winslop doesn't mean you had to.  Documents 
and files can be interchanged between Win, Mac, Unix, and OS/2 relatively 
painlessly.

>lockups, rebooting, etc, just seemed to be a way of life with p/c's.  i 
>didn't realize until later that these things were bill gate's doing.  and 
>if you took a poll amoung average users, i would imagine that most people 
>still don't realize this.  if they did, there would be more outrage about 
>bill gates and his 40% profit margin, and how we all suffer because of it 
>(not that he makes money but he is not held accountable).

But you knew computers didn't have to be like that.  Your main business 
computer wasn't like that. So why didn't you look for alternatives?  You 
wouldn't tolerate that behaviour from your car or your toaster.  So why 
accept it from another commodity item?  

>i do not know about deals between microsoft and ibm.  but i don't think 
>ibm got the word out on a wide enough basis that os/2 was stable and 
>reliable. after windows 95 was released, as buggy as ever, ibm should have 
>shouted from the rooftops that their p/c operating system was reliable.  
>that would have made people want to use it, not feel that they had to.

Granted, IBM could have done a better marketing job but they've never been 
very good at that.  IBM wanted access to Win95 for their PC business.  They 
are hardly likely to shout from the rooftops that it is crap!  IBM never 
forced you to run OS/2.  They did create products (CODE/400, VRPG, 
SmallTalk AS/400 Connection) that ran only on OS/2.  So what!  No one 
complained about MS products only running on Windoze.  If you wanted the 
tools you should have bought the required OS.  After all, isn't that how 
software purchasing decisions should be made?  Buy the software that does 
what you need and then choose the best OS which supports that software.

However, that doesn't excuse the fact that a technical investigation would 
have shown that OS/2 was superior and available and had the applications 
necessary for business.  However, if all you read were the articles in 
News/400 and Midrange from the likes of Roger Pence bleating about how IBM 
should provide Windoze versions of their tools then you were ill-informed.  
And since most of the letters to the editor in those rags agreed with 
Pence's views then I guess you all got what you deserved.

And recite the following: SHIFT KEY, SHIFT KEY, SHIFT KEY ... it's not that 
difficult.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.

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