Thank god its gone! (OS/2 Warp)

Member Name: tanj666

Product:	OS/2 Warp
Date:	24/05/01 (295 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: desktop clock app

Disadvantages: cluncky, unreliable, unfriendly

Many people criticise MS windows for all its frequent crashes. They have obvioulsy never used OS2. If they had, they would enjoy using Windows for the pleasure it actually is. I've never used a more flaky, irksome and annoying os in my life! I ceased counting the number of times it crashed in a day, instead I counted the longest number of minutes before it did a snarly to me!

OS2 was one of the first 32-bit o/s's. It had really quite minimal support in terms of software and the browser, while easy to get a cool animated gif, was actually appalingly bad to use having no nice clean, easy, sensilble interface. Typical of IBM software of the time, really. They went the same way with the browser as they did with evrything else - their own way. The world moved on, OS2 didn't. While it didn't actually use any form of DOS to load it (like Win9x does), it did have the usual config files. except where MS Dos had neat little short ones, os2 had a huge ungainly thing, mostly written in a syntax that made ancient hebrew seem easy to read.

It was multitasking - just not too many, please. I found the early versions of Lotus notes would cripple the box when attempting to use anything else, win9x on the same seemed fine. Guess they couldn't find the coders for the o/s in the end?

It retained a really clunky interface all along. Where the Amiga had big icons on it's desktop, os2 had huge icons. Where windows had sensibly placed and easy to use buttons, os2 had awkward ones. It was always easiest to let the applications screw the desktop rather than trying to tell them what you wanted it to do. Trying to use a killer app. like getting it to run as a X-Windows server (for connecting to Unix boxes and getting a GUI type front end instead of green-on-black) was a big no-no. The system never had enough resources, even for the limited 256 colour disply X-windows uses.

OS2 did have some nice features. The IBMer wh
o created the REXX language wrote a seemingly endless plethora of desktop applications - i.e. one that ran on the desktop that gave the system one or two 'oooh, I wish windows could do that' type of comments. But then you get to screen savers. Windows, Mac and Amiga all had screen savers that mesmerised and bewitched. OS2 had some that bored while most just never even got that far! Still-born static lifeless screens, almost guaranteed to burn the image into the monitor if left too long (funny that - screen savers were there to prevent image burn in weren't they?).

Will anyone in the room still using OS2 please shuffle ignominiously to the rear exits?

Summary: