[327] in OS/2_Discussion
New User Comments
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abelenky@MIT.EDU)
Mon Nov 7 17:00:02 1994
From: abelenky@MIT.EDU
To: os2partners@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 07 Nov 1994 15:07:35 -0500.
<9411072007.AA21146@memcad3.mit.edu>
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 1994 16:59:11 EST
I got OS/2 Warp (real version, not pre-release) over the weekend, and have
installed it. I figured I'd drop my comments here, and let you know what I
thought of it.
*First, a little background:
I'm running a 486DX2/66 w/ 8RAM, CD-ROM, TapeBackup, SoundBlaster-16,
1024x768x256c...
I purchased it from Electronics Boutique at the Galleria Mall
for ~$80 - $25 mail in rebate = ~$55
I've been a DOS/Win 3.1 person till now, and haven't used any previous
versions of OS/2.
*Installation:
Installation of the system went very smoothly. Took
~15 floppies, and 1 hour. It correctly located my CD-ROM, and
SoundCard. It also correctly understood my Autoexec.bat and Config.sys
files, which very few installation programs have ever done...
I don't know if it correctly dealt with my TapeBackup system... it
never mentioned it, and I haven't tried it yet...
Installing the Bonus Pack has proven more difficult. One of the
floppies was damaged, so it hasn't been fully installed yet.
*Running:
It runs very smoothly. The default configuration came up in only
640x470x16c, and for a new user, it took a bit of poking around to
figure out how to change it.
DualBoot works quite nicely, and enables me to swap from DOS to OS/2 in
just a short minute.
The LaunchPad is very nice... intuitive to custom configure and very
useful for simple tasks.
Basic OS systems seem a little sluggish. I'm used to Windows, which
opens Windows instantly... Under OS/2, opening a folder takes a short
thrash at the HD, and a little time to open. Granted that this is less
than a second, but it is noticeably slower than Windows.
It does, however, seem to MultiTask applications quite nicely. I
enjoyed the fact that I could still poke around the PM while
installing the Bonus Pack from floppies with an absolute minimum of
slowdown! I've run a variety of apps, including MicroSoft Flight Sim
5, WordPerfect 6-DOS, Lotus Improv, Lotus 1-2-3 v.5, all with no problems and
reasonable speed.
*Affects on DOS/Win:
Installing Warp on my DOS/FAT partition required that I have my
original Windows Floppies. My Windows came on a CD-ROM for
installation, and OS/2 didn't seem to like that, so I had to borrow a
friend's original Windows Floppies to do it.
After all that, OS/2 messed up my Windows Configurations. It installed
Adobe Type Manager into Windows w/o my permission. It also installed a
printer in the Control Panel, but neglected to install the driver.
This caused a set of "Driver Not Found" messages. It also adjusted my
customized Icon Spacing. Why OS/2 cares how I space my Icons is beyond
me, and this was annoying.
*TechSupport
I had to call TechSupport to get a replacement floppy for the bad one
in my Bonus Pack. After going through a lengthy phone tree at the 800
number listed in the documentation, I was told to call a number in the
407 area-code. My nickle, of course. After a short phone tree there,
I was on hold for ~30 minutes. When I finally got to a real person,
she was not terribly compentent. She didn't understand my problem, and
suggested an unreasonable cure. (That a bad sector on a disk can be
cured by copying the files to a new floppy...) All in all, I was
making a LongDistance call during PrimeTime for nearly 45 min just to
get a bad floppy replaced! Heaven forbid I should have any real
problems! I was not impressed by TechSupport.
*Whats Next?
Once I finish getting the Bonus Pack installed, I want to get MIT-Net
running under Warp. Currently it only comes with SLIP built in. Can
anyone recommend good solutions to get my Ethernet/Resnet working? I
assume I'll stick to DOS/Win apps for quite awhile, and slowly migrate
to Warp.
Overall, Warp is a nice system, but not completely usable for a first timer.
I'm sure it will grow on me, but until then, I'm sticking to FAT, and
heavy use of the DualBoot system. :)
I welcome questions, comments, and even flames. But I may not respond.
-Aaron
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| | Aaron Belenky | |
| |abelenky@mit.edu | |
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