Re: QUES: Imigosh! A MAC!!!

[kress@ctpsun.ciw.edu (Victor Kress)]

I'm an old DOS/Windows person, who is now working in a Mac lab, and is
therefore spending lots of time using them as well.  I installed Warp on my
thinkpad three weeks ago.

Mac hardware is top quality, and these days, quite reasonably priced.

The MAC os is easy to use, but is *tremendously* limited.  You can do
anything you want on a mac, as long as 10000 other people want to do
exactly the same thing, so that it is worth it for some guru to write the
software.  Software is generally expensive and limited  MAC's used to have
the advantage of a single platform, and therefore guaranteed software and
hardware compatibility, but with all the new hardware coming out, this is
no longer the case.  Getting software to work on all the macs in our lab is
just as hard as it is in the intel world.

As far as I'm concerned, OS2 warp has all of the advantages of the mac OS,
but none of the limitations (except for limited software availability).  It
is somewhat more difficult to configure, but it can be customized to
deliver maximum performance for each application.  The interface is also
infinitely more customizable than either word for wienies (WFW), or Mac
system xx. 

The tests in PC magazine suggest that warp is slower than WFW on win16
apps, but not by much, and it is much faster than NT in everything but disk
access.  I do not have any software that I cannot get going under OS2,
including games that never worked under windows.  Because of the stronger
memory management features, I have found that WFW crashers like Mathematica
for Windows run *better* under warp, and when they do crash, it doesn't
crash the whole system.

I strongly doubt that houdini vaporware will do as well as warp in
dos/windows support, considering Apple's lack of experience, and who knows
when that will come out.  Past experience suggests that windows 9x will be
pretty buggy until windows 9x.y comes out (who knows when), and 9x win16
support sounds like a hack job.  NT is a slug, unless you need the security
functions, and from what I've heard it's dos/win16 support is not perfect
either.

As far as chips, the powerPC platform standard is not yet implemented on a
machine as far as I know.  When it is, you can be certain that IBM will get
OS2 going on it.  Presumably, when the standard platform is implemented,
both OS2 and mac system xx will work on both IBM's and macs.  But once
again, how long can you hold your breath?

Obviously, I'm sold on warp, but I am very annoyed at IBM for advertising
"internet access" but then leaving out the trivial amount of extra software
required to interface with an ethernet system.  To buy the appropriate
add-on software to do this (basicly an NDIS stack) costs more than Warp
itself!  I also wish there was more native OS2 software available.

*Disclaimer*  The above tirade is based on personal experience, a bit of
research, and anecdotal evidence.  There are surely many in this group who
can correct me on technical details.

------------------------------------------------------------
Victor Kress
Carnegie Institution of Washington, Geophysical Laboratory
5251 Broad Branch Road N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20015-1305
(202) 686-2410 x2489
------------------------------------------------------------