Send a letter to the editor.
| Chris' Rant | - by Chris Wenham |
That future, although uncertain, depends on us.
While reading through the letters column in the current PC Magazine, I saw many letters from people annoyed with the glitzy Windows 95 overkill and yearning for a little OS/2 coverage. At least 4 or 5 of these letters appear in each issue. So I wondered this: "If they keep publishing these letters, they must be listening, so are we going to see more OS/2 coverage at last? Have they got the message?" Well guess what? They have. There's a full page dedicated to a roundup of OS/2 desktop enhancement utilities like Object Desktop, Deskman/2 and Unimaint. Littered elsewhere you could find mentions (and even screenshots) of other OS/2 software. Well well well, Ziff Davis doesn't like being called a Microsoft Mouthpiece after all.
Any fool can see that this is a magazine just like any other; it's there to be read by people, and to sell advertising it must also be taken seriously by those readers. There is no grand conspiracy; when readers ask for something the editors have no choice but to comply.
What I hate to see are people who insist on the idea that just because there's so much Windows 95 hype in the press, those magazines are all having their strings pulled by Microsoft. If you don't mind me saying so, this is a pile of you know what. Ziff Davis is no more a shouting platform for Gates than CNN is a propaganda machine for Saddam Hussein.
It's up to you to decide exactly what it is you want and how you're going to get it. So think, Do you want independence from Microsoft? Do you want your 32 bits and your preemptive jigery-whatsits? Well say so! Now is not the time to grumble and nurse grudges, because the only person who's going to listen to those is yourself.
The key is to have focus.
It doesn't actually take a whole subscriber base to change the opinion of an editor, just enough people who have a clear goal and the persistence to see it through.
This is an asset that non-technical people can understand very easily. A lot more easily than HPFS or pre-emptive multitasking. A novice home user more greatly appreciates someone who will volunteer to set up their computer, install the OS and get everything configured and running than they would a fancy gadget or the Microsoft Network.
If someone challenges that OS/2 is hard to use or has no applications, don't shout "Oh yeah!!" Instead, politely offer to give them a demonstration of your system. They'll appreciate your time, politeness and sincerity. If they had bad experiences with OS/2 you might be able to prove it was only a minor problem to do with their configuration. Offer to fix it for them, or at least show them how they can do it themselves. Remember, when logic and reality clash, reality always wins. Show them an OS/2 system that works.
We are OS/2's intelligent wizards.
Sometimes it's not easy to find the native apps we want, even though they're available. People are not born with 'hobbes.nmsu.edu' burned into the circuits of their brains and a copy of the Indelible Blue catalog under their pillow. So if someone is considering OS/2, ask them what they want to use it for and show them how and where to get the software that'll do it. Help 'em out for Pete's sake, they're another potential paying customer of native OS/2 software, one more incentive for ISV's to make some. That benefits us all in the end.
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