On Friday 01 February 2002 06:51, you wrote: > > On Sunday, January 20, 2002, at 12:36 PM, Gerard Perreault wrote:
> > > You can expect a feirce battle ahead. They are already trying to > > > diversify, > > > the X box is an example. Pretty soon, products like Lindows, VMware, > > > Wine and > > > the likes will make M$-Windows a sub-system, something running under > > > the control of another major OS, and with time it will be less and less > > > used even > > > if available. > > > > IBM had a similar concept when OS/2 Warp was released. It failed even > > though OS/2 is much better than Windows, IMO. Better luck with > > Linux........ > On Sun, 2002-01-20 at 20:53, Lee Roberts wrote: > Wasn't OS/2 a forerunner of Windows NT? Seems like I recall reading a > long time ago that OS/2 was a collaborative effort between Microsoft and > IBM. For whatever reason, the two companies quit the venture, and > Microsoft "stole" the concepts of OS/2 and made NT. We (my co-workers and I) were working at Computerland as techs when all this was taking place. We'd been involved since before the advent of DOS. At the time, as far as Unix was concerned, SCO was the only thing happening for the 386. OS/2 started life as a contract between IBM and Microshaft. Microshaft started the OS/2 development FOR IBM, but was not getting the job done fast enough to suit the IBM team. (0n purpose, btw.) In addition, it became apparent that MicroShaft was not holding true to the spirit of the contract, and had developed ideas of it's own with regard to OS/2 technology. For these reasons and more, IBM terminated it's relationship with the Shaft. At that point, IBM began OS/2 development with a team that it itself put together, and they eventually came up with a product that was, as Gerard Perreault put it, much better than Windows. But they had a tough row to hoe, because IBM was coming off of the MicroChannel fiasco at the time, and had to contend with fierce public discontent with their treatment of the PC hardware world. Compaq was kicking their @ss with some very advanced PC ISA architecture desktops, you see...systems that were trouncing the MicroChannel hardware in the benchmarks. The "clone" manufacturers were also getting cranked up to full output and making a big dent also. IBM lost the ability to charge for the PC architecture, you see (ISA) because they never tied it up with legalesse like they did later with MicroChannel (too late.) That's what started the whole PC industry off with a bang. A free PC hardware architecture that was non-licensed. We owe our whole world today as it stands to that one happenstance. IBM had to fight the new picture of greed that it had painted with it's attempt to grab everybody back by forcing them to pay for MicroChannel architecture; this tainted their marketing attempts with OS/2 to a large degree. It's one of the things that kept OS/2 from taking over. _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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