Slashdot Mirror
OS/2 Sucessor eComstation Sees The Light Of Day
Bushwacker writes: "Just when everyone thought IBM's OS/2 Warp Operating System was finally dying, the fabled 'licensed-out' 'Warp 5.0' is now in version 1.0.0. Called eComStation, the operating system's developer, Mensys BV promises all of the features and stability of IBM's Warp 4.0, plus many updates, enhancements, and new features, such as efficient SMP support for up to 64 processors as well as easy network integration between client and server versions. eComStation has modest system requirements and should be able to work well on most PCs or x86 based servers without much trouble. But then again there's the age old issue of OS/2 driver support (sigh)... Currently, a preview version is available, with a final release 'coming soon.' The eComStation OS is available in Standard and Pro versions from Indelible Blue." Update: 05/08 11am by C :You can get more information and screenshots from the the .com version of the website.
Looking around at all the biased, uninformed, ignorant posts reminds me why FUD is such a good marketing tool. How many of you that just bashed Os/2 have ever ran it? For more then a day, and before it quote unquote died? How many are baseing your opinion on other FUD? Have any of you ran a BBS and wheren't running Os/2 or Linux? How often could you surf the web, play quake 1, and have 2 nodes with users actively doing things without a slow down? On a NON-pentium computer? Ohh that's right you never could.
I'm not trying to flame here, but I'm tired of people spreading FUD. Not just about Os/2, but Linux, Windows, Mac's, anything that they haven't experienced first hand but they still shoot their mouths off because "everyone else" says so.
And this *will* get modded as a troll.
I'm more disturbed by the name of the company Mensys. Can't help but remind me of, well let's just say, something about "that time of the month".
One thing's for sure : don't let Mensys get involved with Siemens...
You convinced me. I just ran my Atari ST over with a truck. I haven't felt this good since 1985!
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Unless you want to use a network card, SCSI card, IDE controller, sound card, CD or DVD drive, floppy drive, internal hard drive, external hard drive, modem, external FPU, RAM, or that light on the front of the case that tells you when you're accessing the hard drive (that isn't supported anyway).
Sounds like Linux -- except for the $279 price tag!
(please note: this is not flamebait, this is humor (and a little truth, admit it!))
---------------------------------------------
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Unless you want to use a network card, SCSI card, IDE controller, sound card, CD or DVD drive, floppy drive, internal hard drive, external hard drive, modem, external FPU, RAM, or that light on the front of the case that tells you when you're accessing the hard drive (that isn't supported anyway).
I'm sure that this is intended to be humor, but the fact that it's been modded up at least once as "Interesting" means that some people are bound to be confused. Half of the stuff on that list either relies on age-old standards (hence requiring only a generic driver) or has nothing to do with the specific OS (the RAM and das blinkenlights come to mind).
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Why does everybody keep on insisting on keeping dead operating systems lying around? I mean, aside for the fact that I can get a little nostalgic about my Commodore 64 emulator, it doesn't do a wholehelluvalot for me. Just the statement about the lack of driver support should preclude IBM from wasting money on this venture.
Now that I'm done ranting, I'll say something (I hope) semi-intelligent. IBM could have easily used Linux for something like this. They could have even used a flavor of BSD. Either way that would be better in the driver department.
In fact, when is IBM going to get around to publishing their own Linux distro? Are they even thinking about something like this? Why not, Linux is halfway to usurping OS/390 and AIX (not to mention Solaris, Winblowz, IRIX, et al.)?
I would certainly love to see big blue put the moves on a Linux distro. Not only would that give IBM a good reason to start putting a lot of effort into driver creation for Linux, but it would also give their Linux initiative a lot more clout, and it would allow IBM to take Microsoft on directly with a quality and widely used operating system.
I'm surprised that more big software companies haven't put out their own distros. Oracle comes to mind. Why don't they make a linux distro that is specifically for installing Oracle on top of? I think it would be great if I no longer had to deal with all the crap that Redhat introduces into their distro that effectively breaks Oracle. Ugh....
So, OS/2 Warp 5 is at version 1.0.0? Sounds very powerful...surely a scientist is behind this.
If it's enhanced for Pentium III, I am so there, dude.
< tofuhead >
--
It is still the dark of night.
eComStation is brought to you by your turnkey eCommerce B2B P2P bluetooth solutions partner. Thinking different, one customer at a time, because it's your e-internet.
IBM...for great justice.
[fade out from uplifting Moby track...now]
< tofuhead >
--
It is still the dark of night.
...according to the price sheet eCS Standard is $279.00.
If I'm using Windows, or another "alternative" OS like BeOS, *BSD or *LINUX, why would I want to switch?
Can anybody explain why this would be of interest to anyone other than OS/2 people looking to upgrade?
Don't get me wrong. I'm happy for the OS/2 people, and I'm glad to see diversity in the OS market. I just don't see what the advantage is over another OS. Any OS/2 fans wanna pitch it?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Is it just me, or does the name "eComStation" sound like the mother of all conference-room upper-management decisions?
OK, I think we need to put a 'Com' in there somewhere, since dotcoms are big nowadays and everyone wants the internet. How does ComStation sound?
And we need to make it sound more hip and high-tech. How about eComStation?
I guess we should be lucky it's not "eComCyberStation2000i."
Unless you want to use a network card, SCSI card, IDE controller, sound card, CD or DVD drive, floppy drive, internal hard drive, external hard drive, modem, external FPU, RAM, or that light on the front of the case that tells you when you're accessing the hard drive (that isn't supported anyway).
The best thing about OS/2 always was the graphical user interface. Way ahead of their time with their object model and OpenDoc OLE concepts. Everything else (even KDE and M$ Windows) is still far behind. Would have been great to have it run on freeBSD or Linux. Great stable operating system with acceptable driver support and a decent GUI would *really* have been successful.
Who has a shallower grip on reality... OS/2 advocates or Amiga advocates?
[shaking cane] Dang it, you kids don't know what you're missing! There ain't nuthin' that can touch (OS/2, AmigaOS), even today! (OS/2, AmigaOS) has [feature], [feature] and [feature], which these newfangled operating systems haven't gotten right yet! If it wasn't for (IBM/Commodore's) incompetence, and Microsoft's conspiracy, we would be 20 years farther ahead than we are now, instead of stuck with technology that is STILL behind what we were running years ago!
Dang it, where's my geritol....
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
... of the same marketing problems that killed OS/2.
OS/2 Warp 3 and 4, for their times, were vastly superior to any comparably-priced microcomputer operating system. Remember that the competition, at the time, was Windows 3.1 and Windows 95.
But IBM's failure to effectively market their superior product is what killed it, not Microsoft.
The funny part is that in looking at the specifications for this product, I don't see that it will run applications designed for Win9x. Maybe I'm missing something here, but it looks like this runs DOS, Windows 16-bit, and OS/2 16- and 32-bit applications. All well and good, but I've got a lot of money invested in my 32-bit Windows applications, now, and even the availability of StarOffice for this platform isn't going to entice me into converting.
What that omission a marketing decision, or an engineering decision?
Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.