Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

eComStation 1.1 Entry Edition Review

Posted by timothy on from the what-a-name dept.

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."

4 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Look at those Screen Shots! by Orgg · · Score: 5, Informative
    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...
  2. Re:Look at those Screen Shots! by Jungle+guy · · Score: 3, Informative

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

  3. DOS legacy can make OS/2 a good choice by Sloppy · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.)

    --
    As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
  4. Re:Who buys this? by Amiga+Trombone · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.