What item in the OS/2 market is really worth raving about? I'll tell you what -- Warp 4!

Many of you, if you're overseas, will still not have received this little bundle of blue joy. Many of you will have played for endless hours since September 25th. Some of you will have the box sitting on your desks, not having found the time to actually install it. I'm telling you now, make the time, Warp 4 is great!

Frankly, the cosmetics and usability enhancements alone make this upgrade worth having around here. The WarpCenter is close to exactly what we've been wanting for some time (a few flaws but it's close). Built in "window close" buttons, WarpSans font, chiseled windows, cooler looking buttons and controls, and nice sound schemes gave our old Workplace Shell a much needed face-lift.

But Warp 4 is a lot more than just a pretty face. Where else can you find Java, OpenDoc and VoiceType built into an operating system? Nowhere! Talking to your computer! How can anyone not be raving about Warp 4?! Those of you who are doubting Thomases, open your eyes, this is the first step down a long road that ends with us using natural language to interact with our computers. If that's not the biggest development in computer history, it's certainly close. This is amazing stuff!

And while we're raving about Warp 4, let's have some kudos for the great folks at IBM who decided to include a separate CD full of drivers. Obviously everyone is not going to find drivers for their eccentric hardware there, but one central HTML resource is exactly what we need. This is a great improvement from Warp 3. Someone at IBM is thinking (and acting).

Of course, nothing is all good and Warp 4 is no exception. There are various minor incompatibilities with some existing software -- strangely coloured dialogs or the inability to print envelopes with DeScribe come to mind -- but that is to be expected. Overall, we had so few problems after installing Warp 4 that we were honestly wondering what the catch was. Although we kept our Warp 3 partition around as a backup, just in case, we just didn't need to resort to it. Even with established versions of other operating systems, we never had this kind of stability.

Once again, IBM has made us pretty happy with our OS of choice. Warp 4 is a winner and we're stuck on it.

Warp 4

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