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I actually bought a copy of OS/2 Warp when it came out because I was interested in its preemptive multi-tasking, and it was a decent operating system for what i
by steven2012 13y ago
I actually bought a copy of OS/2 Warp when it came out because I was interested in its preemptive multi-tasking, and it was a decent operating system for what it's worth. I was definitely more stable than Window 3.11, but its real problem was compatibility. Back in the early 90s, everything was about getting compatibility, and while OS/2 had good compatibility, didn't have perfect compatibility.
As well, I worked at a bank, and as the article correctly stated, the entire bank was run on OS/2, most notably the ATMs, except the ATMs I worked with was using OS/2 2.0.
However, when Windows NT 3.51 came out, that was the game changer. I was the only person I knew who even knew what it was (I read about it in a magazine at the time), and I was able to get a student-priced copy at my college bookstore. I started using it, and it was awesome, everything just worked, except for some games. You couldn't even compare NT 3.51 to OS/2, it wasn't even in the same level. The look and feel of NT was exactly the same as Windows 3.11, and all the programs worked.
- jonah 13y agoMy computer had 8mb RAM at the time and NT required 16 to install so I "borrowed" another 8 from one of the school computers, installed NT and then returned the memory. It ran well enough on 8.
- steven2012 13y agoI was lucky enough to have a 486DX-50 (not a DX2-66)with 16 MB of RAM, so it ran perfectly for me. Even with what was bleeding edge hardware at the time, I still remember trying to finish writing my senior project using Corel Draw and Microsoft Word on Windows 3.11, and having my computer crash ever 30-45 mins, and my project partner eventually broke down and started crying because of how frustrating it was.
- jonah 13y agoYeah, mine was a Pentium 90! (I decided to scrimp on RAM and get the 90 in stead of the 66.) It was a huge jump from the 286 I had before. (Upgrading memory meant socketing rows of individual DIPs.)
- 72deluxe 13y agoWow, I remember the Pentium 90s coming out and being amazed. I of course had rubbish old late 1980s British computers to use whilst everyone else was on 16 bit machines, but when the Pentium II came out, I finally got hold of a 486 DX2 66Mhz. It is strange how you learn to "make do" with hardware and systems, and learn patience. I finally bought an Ivybridge i7 last year after "making do" with machines for a long time. I fondly remember spending hours and hours tinkering with slow systems, but being just as productive!
- mschaef 13y agoThere are times when you need to have high CPU performance, but the reality is that all semi-current machines are amazingly fast and capable of productive work.
- ams6110 13y agoIf you ever work with an older person who reflexively saves a document every few minutes, you know why.... habits established back when crashes were frequent and sadly, accepted.
- peteri 13y agoI remember buying a copy of OS/2 Warp from Grey Matter in the UK for £5 as a promotional version (required a version of windows to upgrade from IIRC) Sadly the big problem was that it swapped like mad in 4MB which Windows 95 didn't. Doesn't sound like a big problem today but the extra memory would have been expensive at the time. In particular 4MB was a popular option on 386/486 machines arranged as 4 x 1MB which often filled all the SIMM slots on the motherboard so upgrading to 8MB meant buying 4 x 2MB SIMMs which doubled the memory cost. For most of us at the time 4MB was a good usable amount of memory with EMM386 but the upgrade past that didn't give much extra functionality.
- msh 13y ago3 years ago I did consulting for a UK bank on a project that involved migrating off os/2.