NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #30/NN_1992_30.iso/spool/comp/os/msdos/misc/6500

Text File | 1992-12-11 | 2.0 KB | 37 lines

Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
Path: sparky!uunet!usc!enterpoop.mit.edu!mojo.eng.umd.edu!lindor
From: [e-mail] (Lindor Eric Henrickson)
Subject: Re: OS/2 question
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 92 17:45:45 GMT
Organization: College of Engineering, Maryversity von Uniland, College Park
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Originator: [e-mail]
Lines: 25


I recently "switched" to OS/2 and I think its great! (actually I still have DOS5.0
on another partition, but I find that I use OS/2 most of the time).  From what I
understand, trying to run OS/2 on only 4M would be possible but very slow (since the
kernel is on the order of 4M).  I am running OS/2 on a 486/33 w/ 8M and the speed seems
ok to me.  In OS/2 you don't have the 640K barrier as you do in DOS, but if you are
running DOS applications under OS/2, you must run them in a DOS "box"(shell) under OS/2
(which is just a virtual DOS environment having 640K conventional memory +
user specified amounts of EMS and XMS memory). Generally I've found being able to
(truly) multitask DOS, windows, and OS/2 apps all together at once has been very
useful, **but be prepared to spend some time tweaking parameters to get good
performance** (so, if your reason for switching to OS/2 is to avoid this...).

In regards to the question of being able to run _all_ DOS applications.  I don't think
_all_ DOS applications work, but the DOS support is _very_ good.  I (and others
I know running OS/2) have generally had no problems running DOS apps under OS/2 (but
I do know that OS/2 has problems with some programs using undocumented extenders, etc).
Also, generally I've found the windows app support is pretty good (not as good as
the DOS support though), but the apps usually run a bit slower under OS/2-win
than native ms-win.


LH

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