eComStation 1.1 Entry Edition Review

Gentu writes "OSNews reviews the latest incarnation of the legendary OS/2, eComStation 1.1 Entry Edition. The product was released less than a month ago, after a 1.5 years gap of the original 1.0 eCS version. The Serenity Systems guy seems to have overhaul the installation procedure, but not always with the best results."

Comments

Re:Look at those Screen Shots!

[Orgg]

Can you even *pay* Mirocosoft to sell you a copy of Win 3.11 ? You can't - they *force* you stay on the upgrade treadmill

Yes, you can. I can download Windows 3.11 and even Windows 3.12 (Asian language thing, I think) with my MSDN subscription. I still have clients with Windows 3.1 in use where it just isn't feasable to upgrade. Getting support for it on the other hand...

Re:Look at those Screen Shots!

[Jungle guy]

You can also buy a current version of Windows and request a downgrade to Microsoft.

DOS legacy can make OS/2 a good choice

[Sloppy]

Yes, legacy apps, and they are still out there. I still maintain DOS code that I wrote in the 1980s. We sent out a letter to the customers who are still paying monthly maintenance fees (so we know they're still running the apps, otherwise they wouldn't be paying) (BTW, what a great racket maintenance contracts are) to see if they wanted to um.. well, frankly, to see if they wanted to pay a shitload of money for us to rewrite old stuff for a newer platform. There was very little interest. Maintenance is a lot cheaper than rewriting, so as long as their new Dell with XP preloaded is able to run the code, they'll keep it. Thus the legacy won't die... ever(?).

And nothing (not even DOS) runs DOS stuff as well as OS/2. I ran OS/2 from 1994 to 2002 for running that stuff (editing with Edix, compiling with Clipper and linking with Blinker, testing the resulting app), and OS/2 couldn't be beat. Windows is slower (you can easliy "feel" the difference between Windows and OS/2 on the same machine) and a lot flakier. And don't even get me started on Linux+DosEmu, which is what I use for that part of my job now (DosEmu is "good enough" but it sucks).

If maintaining those DOS apps were enough work to keep me busy fulltime, then I would still be running OS/2 today, because it's the best tool for that niche.

The problem is that it's a pretty small niche. Other OSes are capable of doing the job (just not as well) so if you also need to do "mainstream" stuff as part of your job, then it probably becomes worthwhile to run Windows or Linux and just put up with the inferior performance. (That's what I did.)

other reviews and links

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.os2ezine.com/20030416/page_2.html

has a nice review of eComStation 1.1

It has been years since I've visited the os2ezine. I be the the slashdotting does them good! I doubt an os/2 site has gotten this much traffic since....wait..its err os/2 nevermind.

Re:Who buys this?

[Amiga Trombone]

Only ancient servers use os/2 to run legacy apps.

Not entirely true - I know of several large banks and financial institutions that are still running it on the desktop for custom applications.

They love the stuff. Can't talk 'em into migrating for anything.

Re:Yeah!

[benzapp]

Actually, VMWare pretty much sucks for running a wide variety of non-unix, non-windows operating systems. Look back to previous posts about Microsoft purchasing Connectix. Part of the reason this really was a problem is Connectix just makes a better product.

Anyhow, I am running OS/2 Warp 4 on VirtualPC no problem here.

Re:REXX support?

[MrBlack]

AFAIK IBM's ObjectREXX has an active scripting binding, so on windows anywhere you can write VBScript/JScript you can also put REXX code there too. Similar bindings exist for a lot of languages including Python and Perl. I don't actually _know_ of anyone using REXX, but this is a possibility.

A quick list of possible WPS advantages...

[Richard Steiner]

* One can arrange the icons on the desktop or in each folder in several different ways (around the top, bottom, left, right, etc), and UNDO the arrange command if it was done accidentally by selecting the "Undo Arrange" item on the main menu for that desktop or folder object.

* Individual icons or groups of icons can be Locked to the desktop (becoming immune from future Arrange actions) and Unlocked for later moving.

* Each desktop shadow (shortcut/alias) has an item in its context menu called "Locate Parent" that lets a user quickly locate the parent of a given shadow.

* Desktop shortcuts actively track the original file across physical drives and adjusts desktop shadow pointers accordingly. A move of a whole directory tree from drive C: to F: would have no impact on the desktop (all desktop links that point into the tree are updated automagically by the WorkPlace Shell).

* One can create a "Workgroup Folder" to store a bunch of related programs and folders (say the stuff one needed for web site development). If one opens that workgroup folder, all of the items stored within are opened at once, unfolding the working environment.

* One can create a "Template object", basically creating an infinite stack of similar objects from which one can then "tear off" (via drag-and-drop) new copies of that object. This makes it easy to set up a document-centric work environment where one simply creates a series of template objects for all of the file types that one works with. To create a new document, image file, folder, or whatever, just tear a new one from the appropriate template.

* Support in the desktop for true objects that are able to inherit attributes from their parents. If one extends the base Folder object to add FTP client functionality, for example, and someone else decided to modify the base Folder class to handle something new, the "FTP Folder" child class will also gain the new functionality.

I'm sure there's stuff I'm missing...