Isn't It Time? - by Pete Grubbs

here are a lot of Windows 3.1 machines in the world that would benefit from an upgrade to OS/2 Warp. All we need to do is get the word out.

I have a friend, an old college chum, who works for the University of Pittsburgh, in Pittsburgh, PA. He's been doing some technical writing for those fine folks for nearly a year now and he's convinced that the battle for personal computing is finally, completely over. There isn't an OS/2 Desktop anywhere on his campus, the Macs are all being crated up and replaced with shiny new Pentiums running Redmond's second favorite flavor of OS. The world now does its computing the Microsoft way or it doesn't do it at all.

Never mind Gateway's recent announcement that they will begin production of a new Amiga (complete with a new OS) and will be shipping it this time next year; never mind the flurry of speculation after Bill Gates sank a few million into Apple; never mind that Apple is apparently waiting for yet another week before it files for Chapter 11; never mind the 42% market share that a certain IBM product owns on desktops in the banking industry.

Never mind Ralph Nader.

Those are all blips on the screen which will fade faster than you can say, "delayed shipping date." Even if it's an admittedly second-rate product, Microsoft's hold on the desktop is unbreakable and anyone who thinks differently just isn't aware of the facts.

You know, my friend could be right.

After all, there are an awful lot of machines out there that are running Windows apps. We've all seen them. But stop for a minute and answer this question: How many of those workstations were running Windows 95 or NT? Not all that many, right?

How many are still chugging away with Windows 3.1 or 3.11?

A bunch, right?

In fact, according to an article by April Jacobs on the front page of the October 6 issue of Computer World ("Migration Costs Stall NT Drive"), there are a ton of Windows 3.x machines still in use. Jacobs refers to information from Dataquest, a San Jose, CA, based firm that indicates that, "more than half of those [companies] with more than 1,000 users have no Windows NT Workstations installed. A quarter of those same companies run 100% Windows 3.x environments." Chris Le Tocq, an analyst at Dataquest, believes that this is an indication that, "vast numbers of 3.x users remain in corporations."

Just imagine. Vast numbers of computer users, professionals like you and me, who have to reboot their machines again and again and re-create work that should've been protected by a stable operating system but was lost to yet another GPF. Thousands upon thousands of desktops that can't do anything much with Java, that can't run a print job in the background while surfing the Web or downloading a file for fear that the machine will lock. Millions of dollars in potential sales for a company that could provide a stable, robust operating system compatible with all those legacy applications.

Of course, these folks could upgrade to Windows 95, but Jacobs notes that the actual cost to upgrade those machines would average US$200 per site for license and installation. That, of course, doesn't include hardware upgrades and training. The cost for upgrading to NT could be between 20% and 50% higher. Hugh Allan, director of information technology at Dunlop Tire Co., has about 1,300 users and an 80% Windows 3.1 shop. He's not interested in moving to NT yet because of, "installation costs and application headaches." (Gee, could that mean that NT doesn't run old Windows 3.x or DOS apps very well?)

What if someone came along with an operating system that didn't need a huge hardware upgrade to run efficiently? What if that operating system could be easily set up to look just like Windows 3.1? What if it not only looked like Windows 3.1 but even worked like 3.1, so new users never had to learn a different interface? What if it offered built-in networking? What if you could isolate a misbehaving application so it didn't take down the entire system if it threw a GPF? What if its MSRP were significantly lower than NT or 95? Do you think someone in Hugh Allen's position might consider installing an OS like that?

Now, I'm just a poor old country boy and what I know of the world off the farm has a lot more to do with colleges and universities than it does with corporate meetings, IT managers and the like. But it seems to me that there's an opportunity here. There's a chance to get a bunch of computer users who have never even heard of OS/2 to give it a try.

If someone (IBM certainly comes to mind, but, like most of you, I'm not too impressed with their ability to market OS/2) targeted this market; if someone hit the road with a ThinkPad 760 (or anything rather modest by today's standards but still able to support Warp 4.0 easily); if someone showed up at one of these Windows 3.x shops with a notebook full of stuff like WordPerfect 5.1 or 6.1 for Windows, Quicken 6.0 for DOS, Lotus 1-2-3 for Windows and maybe a smattering of native OS/2 apps (Lotus Notes or SmartSuite '97, the Warp BonusPak, Object Desktop Professional) and started doing the same kind of work that goes on in that shop, day in, day out, wouldn't that get noticed?

Imagine our road warrior sitting at a desk demonstrating how well Warp handles legacy DOS/Win apps, multitasking without crashes or GPFs, printing in the background while he's surfing the 'net or recalculating a spreadsheet, while, all around him, people are rebooting yet again, cursing and grinding their teeth instead of being productive. Don't you think someone would say, "Hey, what's he got that we haven't?" Don't you think that there's some potential for sales here? I have to say that it sure looks that way to me.

Instead of apologizing for Warp's incredible ability to run DOS and Windows stuff better than the "real thing", I'd like to see IBM make those capabilities the focus of a massive, aggressive campaign to get Warp onto these Windows 3.x machines. I know it's been done before. I remember the old "A better DOS than DOS, a better Windows than Windows" ads. In fact, I bought my first copy of OS/2 because of them. And, yes, there are lots of people who will also remember those ads less fondly than I -- people who won't be easy sells. But it's my sincere belief that people will support a superior product once they know it's a superior product. This looks like a golden opportunity to educate a bunch of customers and grab some market share.

But maybe not. Maybe my buddy in Pittsburgh is right and we're all living with expectations that will never come to pass. Maybe Microsoft does have the rest of the world thoroughly bamboozled and we're just marking time until the inevitable end. Still, you never know until you try, eh?

Pete Grubbs is a self-described OS/2 wonk, a doctoral candidate in English literature at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a part-time faculty member at Penn State and is currently developing a copy editing/creation service, The Document Doctor, which tailors documents for small businesses.