OS/2 e-Zine! - Our Investment

Our Investment - by Kel Brown

When we talk about investment we most often think about money but investment can also include resources in material and manpower. We generally don't think about time as an investment unless it is lost. Time is something we measure the investment with. If a computer lasts five years then it has been a good investment. When a 3.5" floppy that's holding a backup sits on the shelf for less than a week and already has bad sectors then we consider it a bad investment.

With Merlin (aka OS/2 version 4.0), users are enjoying features that were unavailable in previous releases and, more importantly, a much richer choice of software. But our investment in OS/2 will increase the more we use it and we have to consider at this point the implications our dependency will have.

The quantity of native OS/2 software has increased dramatically in the last two years. Netscape has given OS/2 browser parity with Microsoft users, Java on the Desktop provides a technology lead that other OSes won't address until their next major revision, Lotus is shipping a (partially) native version of SmartSuite and the evolutionary war between PMMail and MR/2 ICE has produced two of the best electronic mail clients found on any operating system. For Stardock Systems a special place in OS/2 heaven has been reserved, for no other single development house has contributed so much to the argument that OS/2 does have the applications and support needed by users.

When the only decent word processor to be found on an OS/2 system was Word for Windows or WordPerfect for Windows, the only choice was to dual-boot or start a Windows session, but with the proliferation of native OS/2 applications the choice has become not which one to use but whether to use them or not. Before too long, DOS games will be the only reason to open a DOS session. Whether or not things continue to improve depends largely on IBM and less on application developers.

IBM's attitude toward OS/2 has finally been defined and while it guarantees a future for corporate users, the needs of the home user have been, to a large degree, ignored. Full screen DIVE, which would have made OS/2 a competitor with Win95 as a gaming platform, has been abandoned. No announcement about support for USB (Universal Serial BUS) or DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) is forthcoming. Support for these technologies would mean more choice for the home user but IBM's focus is the corporate user. For them, chasing the bleeding edge of technology only means increased cost. IBM feels they only have to provide support when a specific technology becomes common and even then, only if it fills some need of the business world. There is a very large possibility that OS/2 will become second best by virtue of its success in business. Second best is not the reason we started using OS/2 in the first place.

OS/2 users have long been known as power users, people who need to ride the cresting wave of new technology. We needed OS/2 because we needed the power only it could give us. Now it is in danger of becoming an operating system that is merely 'good enough'. Our dependency is at issue here. Will our reliance on OS/2 today cripple our ability to work and play tomorrow? More importantly, will it prevent us from making a transition to another operating system in time to judge our investment 'good enough'?

Will things continue to improve? If they do not, are OS/2 users going to have to start dual-booting to some form of Windows again just to be able to keep up? How long will that continue before users abandon it all together in favour of an OS and a company that wants to cater to home users? How will our investment be regarded then?

We cannot afford to hold our breath and hope for the best any longer. At no other time in this operating system's history has there been more evidence to refute the claims of industry know-it-alls that insist, "OS/2 is dead". Native application support is here and with the huge push behind Java there is every reason to believe it will stay that way. The challenge now is to convince IBM that investing in OS/2 by continuing to improve the product, for the home user as well as for their corporate customers, is worth it.

Kel Brown is a Math and Computer Science major at Saint Mary's University. He is an avid OS/2 supporter and a member of Team OS/2.

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