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1995-09-24
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Object Desktop FAQ v1.00
Q: What is Object Desktop?
A: Object Desktop is an advanced desktop environment designed to be the
best productivity enhancement for OS/2 ever developed. It provides a
set of new functions to the operating system and new interfaces for
getting to your objects faster. Once installed, you can expect to make your
system faster, easier, more powerful, and well, nicer to look at.
Q: Does it replace the Workplace Shell?
A: No. It inherits from the Workplace Shell and adds new functionality to
it.
Q: So how much memory is this going to take?
A: Very little. A total of about 1 megabyte is allocated (with very
little of that actually resident). This is the true power that OS/2
brings to the table. OS/2 applications that inherit functions from the
operating system can be small and fast. This sort of benefit gives users
a "sneak preview" of what OpenDoc could do. Fat bloated programs could
be greatly reduced!
Q: How much does it cost then?
A: The suggested retail price is $99.95. However, the street price is
usually significantly less than that. You should be able to find it
pretty much anywhere.
Q: So what REAL functionality am I getting for my money? All marketing
talk aside, what do I really get in the package? I only paid $90 for
Warp itself! Why should I pay almost as much for Object Desktop as I
did for the OS???
A: Stardock has a history of providing software at extremely aggressive
prices. Take the best-selling OS/2 Essentials. You get a full utility
suite for under $40. Stardock continues this with Object Desktop.
To even approach the features you get in Object Desktop, you'd have to
pay many hundreds of dollars on other platforms. Below are some bread
and butter features that we believe will convince you that Object Desktop
is not only reasonably priced but very inexpensive.
Specific features users have asked for are answered here. Examples:
1) I want OS/2 faster! There should be a way to cache the Workplace
Shell.
Object Desktop adds this capability. You can now HyperCache
your often-used folders and eliminate virtually all disk access
when accessing these folders. HyperCache is the only third party
caching software available for OS/2 so we cannot price compare but
caching software on other platforms (such as DOS) cost as much as
Object Desktop!
2) OS/2 users want disk compression features to save valuable drive
space but are generally wary of adding device drivers or
suffering a performance hit. They also want more control over
what they compress and what they don't. Finally, they want to
be able to take their compressed data to other systems that
don't necessarily have a device driver based disk compression.
With hard drives becoming so inexpensive, users have loudly and
clearly said that what they usually do is simply Zipup their
big files and data and then unzip them. Or all the files they
download or transfer from co-workers stay compressed until needed.
Imagine if these "Zipped" files suddently become like folders? Where
you could treat your zipped up data as if it were just in a regular
uncompressed folder? What if we went further and even allowed you to
RUN many of your programs RIGHT FROM THE ZIP file! No trick here,
the power of OS/2 shows forth again through Object Desktop!
Object Desktop provides Object Archives (Object Zip, Object Arc,
etc.). Why re-invent the wheel when everyone already uses ZIP,
LZH, etc? Object Desktop takes these files and turns them into
Folder objects! You can now access your data and run many of
your programs directly from the archive! This is the power of
OS/2 at work! Virtually anything you can do with a regular
folder you can now do with your archive files.
3) OS/2 users really do want a file manager but EVERY major file
manager made for OS/2 was blind to things OS/2's special objects
and capabilities, such as Shadow objects, long file names on FAT
disks, program objects, etc.
Object Desktop provides the Object Navigator, the first true
Workplace Shell file manager. It can do all of the above and
more. Because it is integrated into the Workplace Shell it uses
your existing associations and other extensions you may have
added to your system.
4) Corporations and end users both have asked for OS/2 to be more
keyboard friendly. The crash protection and multitasking power
of OS/2 won a lot of converts from DOS but not everyone was
crazy about having to use a GUI. Mobile users have long
requested for OS/2 to make it easier to do things with the
keyboard.
Object Desktop adds the Keyboard LaunchPad. You can now assign
a program or whole groups of programs or projects to a single
keystroke. For example, a mobile user could start their entire
set of I-net applications by associating their I-net
applications to a keystroke such as Ctrl-Alt-I. What's more,
you are NOT limited to programs--folders and data files are
also easily added.
5) OS/2 users have often requested a way to be able to better
exploit OS/2's multitasking.
Object Desktop provides Virtual desktops via the Control Center.
Now, you can switch between your virtual desktops and operate
much more efficiently. How often has a Windows program, for
example, used up the entire screen making it tedious to start
other processes? Now, you can just switch to another virtual
desktop and have a clean screen. It even monitors all your
desktops in real-time!
6) OS/2 users have complained that accessing their program was too
tedious.
The LaunchPad introduced in OS/2 Warp was a big step forward but
it doesn't go far enough for many users. Object Desktop provides
the Tab LaunchPad. Now, you can organize your programs into
different categories separated by tabs. Moreover, a "Tasks" tab
is also on the Tab LaunchPad that allows you to minimize your
programs to the Tab LaunchPad. No more desktop clutter.
These are just a few of Object Desktop's features!
Q: I heard that Object Desktop makes OS/2 look like Microsoft Windows
95?
A: No. Windows 95 borrowed a lot from OS/2 in terms of its look.
Windows 95 has added a lot of window dressing to Windows, but it
certainly doesn't have a monopoly on making things look "slick."
The bottom line: one of Object Desktop's features is to enhance
OS/2's visual appeal by giving OS/2 a much more modern and "slick"
look. An example of this is making OS/2's buttons and controls more
intuitive. These feature enhancements should not be confused with
cloning any other operating system interface.
Q: How does Object Desktop compare with a new utility called NPS WPS
Enhancer?
A: NPS is exactly what it says, a WPS enhancer. It adds some neat
special effects to OS/2 such as window shadowing and exploding
window animations along with a couple of useful features such as
easy copy and paste from a command line window. However, Object
Desktop and NPS have little in common feature-wise. End users
looking to add some neat gadgets to their system will probably like
NPS. Object Desktop is aimed towards improving your productivity
and adding a number of much-needed features to OS/2. There has been
some confusion because both products enhance OS/2 (Object Desktop adds
features and NPS adds special effects). The two work well together
but have as much in common as a Word Processor and a Spreadsheet.
NPS can be obtained from Stardock's WWW site: http://oeonline.com/~stardock,
it is a very neat end user enhancer.
Q: Where will I be able to find Object Desktop?
A: Most likely at your local store. You can already find most Stardock
products at stores such as CompUSA, ElekTek, Micro Center, Egghead,
Indelible Blue and a host of other stores. A list of places to buy
our software is available on our WWW site,
http://oeonline.com/~stardock.
Q: Give me a "cool" example of Object Archives in action?
A: There is an OS/2 arcade game called Havoc (on OS/2 Essentials).
With Object Desktop, you can drag and drop a Zip object template to your
desktop, drag and drop your Havoc folder onto the Zip object and now
run Havoc directly from the ZIP. On another system, a user could have a
video file in a ZIP that they can play right from the ZIP file. This
saves them about 2 megs of disk space.
Q: What else is cool about Object Desktop? Give me a couple "neato" things
that it does.
A: For one thing, it hooks into OS/2 to replace the Alt+Tab
functionality to work similarly to what is provided in Microsoft
Windows 3.1. You can type Alt+Tab and a little window showing what
you are about to switch to shows up. It also places them in recently
accessed order!
Object Desktop also replaces the window list with a new and improved
one that shows the icons of what you are running. It also has a
button bar that makes it much easier to manipulate your tasks. In
short, the window list finally becomes a REAL task manager.
An other feature that rarely gets discussed is the Workplace Shell
text editor. One of the most common features used in any operating
system (whether DOS, Windows, OS/2, Unix, etc) is some sort of
text editor. OS/2 comes with EPM and the System Editor. Object
Desktop's editor is integrated into the actual operating system,
which means that it loads up almost instantly and uses virtually no
memory. It is also considerably more powerful than the system
editor and as about as flexible as EPM.
Q: I heard that Object Desktop contains no executables! How is this
possible?
A: Object Desktop integrates directly into the operating system via
SOM. Because of this, the objects created by Object Desktop can
easily be duplicated and modified by customers. For example, many
users create two or three control centers to put on the desktop:
one Control Center only has virtual desktops turned on, another Control
Center only has resource monitoring on, and a third one just has
the clock turned on. We aren't claiming this sort of thing can't be
done by conventional programs, but with Workplace Shell objects, it
is just a natural thing to do. In essence, Object Desktop becomes part
of OS/2. It is not a "utility" or "application" in a sense. It is meant
as a third party upgrade to OS/2 and because of Stardock's close relationship
with IBM, future versions of OS/2 will work seamlessly with Object Desktop
as well. Not to mention that because Object Desktop uses SOM to work its
magic, compatibility problems are extremely rare!
Q: So who is the target audience for Object Desktop?
A: All OS/2 users. Our goal is nothing short of migrating every OS/2
user to Object Desktop. Any person using OS/2 should have Object
Desktop. This is why we have priced Object Desktop so low (compare
Object Desktop's plethora of features to stand alone products or
other products on other platforms that have similar features and
Object Desktop shows itself as a real bargain). Stardock has also
created extremely (or as one IS manager put it -- unbelievably) low
priced site licensing guides. Moreover, Stardock has very low
priced OEM pricing to encourage OEMs to pre-load Object Desktop on
their machines.
Whether you're an IS manager looking to increase your users
productivity or reduce training costs, a PC manufacturing looking to
give your systems a competitive edge, or an end user who wants to
turbo-charge OS/2 to a new level.
As Matt Hite, a reviewer at I/O Magazine put it, "For all intent and
purposes, Object Desktop is a third party upgrade to OS/2. It's what
OS/2 users have been asking for all these years!"
You can find more out more about Object Desktop on Stardock's World Wide Web
site:
http://oeonline.com/~stardock/
Stardock can be reached at 313-453-0328 or FAX 313-453-1480.