SWITZERLAND REPORT

EDITOR's NOTE: Rene is on assignment, however, he will return with us soon. Consequently, the following is his column from the May issue.

MARCH DIDN'T EXIST

Sorry for being absent last month, but a lot of people here in Switzerland were suffering the flu and all I could do during my holiday was sharing this situation with many others. On the other hand, there wasn't much to write about, but I don't believe this astonishes you. But now I'm back again.

COMMON Switzerland (http://www.common.ch/)

On April 2nd, OS/2's eleventh birthday Common organized a seminar for it's members and we were lucky to have David Obermann as one of our speakers. He gave us an overview of OS/2's history and spoke about it's future. Under the current situation, this wasn't an easy job for him. IBM's management, especially the marketing guys, are not only making life difficult for the OS/2 community, but also for a lot of IBM employees. David showed us, that the future for OS/2 is Java, but that's a well-known fact already. Also WorkSpace On-Demand must be the clients' future. The brightest OS/2 future will be the Warp Server. It looks like if you want to continue working on a fantastic platform, you'll have to install the server software on your personal client system, because there will be no Warp 5, 6 or whatsoever. In many discussions with IBM people, the question normally arises, what we would like to see in a next version of Warp. First of all, I would like to see a version 4.6. Why I name it 4.7? Very easy. Take the original version 4.0, add FixPak 6 and the rest that's in the pipeline for FixPak 7. Put it on one installable CD and give us the possibility to install everything at once. It's not necessary to deliver all documentation with the CD on paper.

But now, back to our Common OS/2 seminar. David demonstrated everything that's available today and in the near future. Warp Server, Client, WsOD, Citrix and Louts' new eSuite. It looked great and for many middle to large companies this is an ideal solution, but what are we going to do on our home pc's in the future?

After David completed his presentation Oliver Minzloff from Minzloff Data (http://www.minzdat.ch/) showed us what software for OS/2 is available today. Also Oliver's presentation showed that today's situation is a result of lousy IBM marketing efforts. Most of today's software for OS/2 can be found in the public domain and only little native software became (or will become) available this year, like Star office and Lotus SmartSuite.

Finally, Jens Grundtvig gave us an overview of the OS/2 User Association (http://os2web.inserto.ch/os2ua/index.html) and showed that it really makes sense to join the OUA. Members of the OUA will get a discount on the IBM Software Choice, on OS/2 software and may visit all seminars and forums (each first Tuesday of the month).

COMPARING SYSTEMS

Last year my home office (and fun) machine was a pure OS/2 system and it was the only one. Today, this has changed. I now have 2 additional machines, one with 95 and another with NT on it. Why these two? Very simple. The 95% system is somewhat like a Playstation or Nintendo 64. Yes you're right. Castrate a Nintendo 64 for 50%, divide the remainder sometimes by two and you'll have the machine you'll find as soon as you know where you want to go today. Unfortunately, it's the only possibility to keep Lara Croft running around. The other (non-OS/2) machine runs NT. Which stands (IMHO) for No Tombraider. As you see, I'm running today's most well known operating systems. And here's what I suffered in the last 2-3 months. The following scale means 1=lousy or worse and 10=perfect.

OS/2 W95 NT

Installation   6 7 7 (Too many reboot in OS/2)
Stability      9 3 4 (NT has a blue screen of death)
Flexibility 1  9 3 3 (where's the good old config.sys)
Flexibility 2  5 8 8 (changing screen resolution)
Flexibility 3  7 4 4 (turn off the stupid autorun and restartobjects functions)
Gaming         4 8 6 (didn't compare with Playstation and N64)
Screen Savers  4 8 8 (it's more fun on the others)
Internet Access9 6 6 (still the best software on OS/2. The 4 is for Communicator)
Simple Editor  9 4 4 (wordpad is no editor like E or EPM)
Office Suites  4 9 9 (where is the new Smartsuite for OS/2)
Network Client 9 7 7 (How to share the server's COMx?)
Network Server 8 1 6 (10 and 9 are for AS/400, AIX, etc)
Availability   3 10 7 (Meant as where to by the stuff)
Product mktg   0 10 9 (0 is for non-existant)

THIS MONTH'S STORY

Some week's ago, I visited the Microsoft shop in town together with my 13 year old daughter. One of the machines was running W98 and the flight simulator. After touching the force feedback joystick (reminds me of Darth Vader), my daughter first did a step back. She hadn't seen (or touched) one before. Then she tried to get the plane into the air, successfully. But flying around is not one of her skills, at least today. It took about 2-3 minutes to crash. Not the plane! The machine!!!

Nothing moved anymore, not even the mouse. When I asked what the difference with W95 is, I didn't get a useful answer. I wonder, who is willing to pay 39 Swiss Francs (or was it German Marks) for a product like this. Anyway most W98 CD's I've seen were gold shining and probably their cost might have been some two or three Swiss Francs. (1-2 US$)

NEXT MONTH'S STORY

I have not the slightest idea, what to write, but perhaps you do. If so, please send me your story and I'll put it in my column. You do not necessarily need to live in Switzerland. Your story may come from all over the world, as long as it has something to do with OS/2 or the others.

TIP OF THE MONTH

In OS/2 CONNECT you'll find some OS/2 tips and tricks, but here's a different one: are you looking for a shop where you can buy OS/2 of the shelf? In this case you need to go to Milton Keynes in the UK. Near the station you'll find an office shop and inside, close to the cash registers you'll find it. Now it's your problem to know where Milton Keynes is and how to get there. You'll have to hurry, because I've seen only one copy of it.

FINALLY, A SAD STORY

OS/2 Inside is dead. As far as I know, this was the last pure OS/2 magazine worldwide. The April edition was the last one. At the same time Byte Germany started. The OS/2 Editors will write for this magazine in the future and you should see a 32 pages OS/2 add-on to Byte Germany. Is this the result of IBM marketing?

SOME MORE ON IBM MARKETING

The following was told by Frank Soltis, the leading AS/400 architect. During development, AS/400 systems have very useful code names. In the past we've seen Silverlake, Apache, Eiger and Invader. When those project were finished, IBM marketing invented fantastic names like B10, F35 or even 150. Frank decided to have a coffee (or even beer perhaps) to ask for naming the new system (announced in February 98) Invader. Frank has probably spent only 1.70 US$ for this coffee or beer, because the latest IBM AS/400 model is now named 170. Isn't that a brilliant idea. It must have taken those marketing guys, probably the same who invented "WorkSpace On-Demand," many sleepless nights to become such a genius. At least, now we know why OS/2 Inside died and why we don't have a SoHo OS/2. If we wait a little while, we might see IBM employees having numbers replacing their names. Of course Lou Gerstner will be No 1, but who is going to be 007? Did you know there are only 2 well-know figures worldwide? Think of 007 and 4711. Those figures weren't made famous by the IBM marketing department. Come on you marketing guys. Do the same as the IBM developers: a good job, before it's too late.

Rene is an AS/400 technical consultant, an IBM Certified OS/2 Engineer, and a proponent of OS/2 on the PC. Rene also serves on the board of directors for the 'COMMON Switzerland' (AS/400 user group).