Re: WIN95 & Thinkpads (VERY Long!)

[Mike Schaeffer <mschaef@cs.utexas.edu>]

On Fri, 14 Jul 1995, Chris Hanson wrote:

>    Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 14:59:01 -0500 (CDT)
>    From: Mike Schaeffer <mschaef@cs.utexas.edu>
> 
>    If IBM had really 
>    wanted to make a statement, they should have made it policy that if you 
>    buy an IBM x86 box, you get OS/2 period.   By not doing that, they really 
>    undermined the image of the system. A friend of mine bought a Thinkpad (A 
>    340 I think, but it's still a decent Thinkpad :) a while ago, and guess 
>    what was installed... MS Windows. 
> 
> Much as I agree with your other statements, I don't think I can go
> along with this one.  My impression is that ThinkPads are one of the
> few products that are keeping IBM afloat (I don't think anyone would
> argue that OS/2 is).  If I were an IBM exec, I wouldn't consider doing
> anything that would threaten the ThinkPad income -- and I suspect that
> refusing to offer Windows preloads would seriously impact their sales.

	I agree that the ThinkPads are one of IBM's biggest sellers, which
would have made pre-installed OS/2 that much more significant. If they
really viewed OS/2 as a threat to the sales of the machines (excellent 
as they are) then they should take a serious look at OS/2 and what should 
be done to make it competitive.  After all, look at the job Microsoft has 
done getting Windows to work on other companies machines.  If IBM can't 
at least put OS/2 on thier own systems then there's a problem.  This 
discussion is probably better suited to an advocacy newsgroup or 
somesuch. :)


					-Mike