On Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:34:08 -0700 Robert Smits <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Yes, it's still being sold, but under the name Ecomstation, not OS/2. I hoped > it would eventually reach a sufficient stage of maturity to have current > drivers for everything and so on, but IBM's lack of marketing and support > have essentially killed a product that was superior to Windows in many ways. While OS/2 was a good OS, but Windows happened to get itself established. The end user didn't know any difference. There is a long line of failed products that were technically good, but never succeeded in the marketplace. Remember that IBM is a big iron vendor. They were never successful with low end products. > eCs added a number of things, including an awful LVM system that was'nt > necessary or needed, and added much complications to the install. (And it > wasn't compatible with Linix LVM, either). The other thing that hurt OS/2 was the appearance and viability of the free Unix systems (eg. Free BSD) and Linux in the 1990s. > IBM costs us a lot of time and money with their lackadaisical support for > OS/2. I reminded them of that when they tried to sell us new ATMs for our > credit union. Years ago the IBM salesman tried to sell us a Series 1 for our POS devices in our fast food restaurants. The existing ones cost about $5000 per store for a maximum system at that time. I don't think we could have acquired a bare-bones Series 1 for under $20,000. And our chairman was looking to build a home-grown one that would cost about $3000 per store ($2000 savings * 1000 stores). And at the time, we got wonderful support from IBM. -- Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
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