Average Joe’s Experience with OS/2 Warp.

By Ben Zell (ben.zell@swcbbs.com)

At first I wanted a good 32-bit operating system that would relieve me of the resource problems and multitasking limitations of Windows for Workgroups 3.11. I went over to my local computer store and picked up OS/2 Warp for $70 on CD-ROM hoping this would solve all of my problems. The process:

PROBLEM #1: Compressed Drive Incompatibility

I looked at the installation manual and noticed that it said that OS/2 Warp would not install on any compressed drive (besides with special OS/2 compression utilities). I am using DriveSpace, which comes with MS-DOS 6.22, so that means I have to uncompress my hard drive, requiring me to delete some important things to free up space (Like Doom!!). Well, after all that, I installed OS/2 and no major installation problems occurred.

PROBLEM #2: Unsupported Printer

I am finally in OS/2 and am configuring it to my hardware when I notice that it doesn’t support my printer- nor does it support Windows drivers, so I would probably have to call the printer manufacturer’s BBS (long distance) and download one... what a pain the ass!

PROBLEM #3-5: Windows Programs in General

Okay, now that all the installation is over, I’m ready to try a Windows program (due to lack of OS/2 programs). I go into the Win-OS/2 folder and double click Edit Master, my text editor of choice. Error! Error! Error! I though OS/2 was supposed to run Windows programs seamlessly?!? Well, that program is made in Visual Basic, so I decided to try my communications program (Procomm Plus for Windows).

PROBLEM #4: Modem Trouble

Well, this problem adds a little to the previous one but here goes... Well immediately I spot a few graphic glitches that weren’t there before, and the size of the title bar and min/max buttons are unusually large and out-of-proportion compared to the rest of the window. So, I try to dial a BBS assuming at least that would work, CONNECT 9600. What’s the deal here?!? I have a V.34 28800 baud modem! I want my moneys worth and I want to be able to connect at 28800 (or one of the fallbacks). Well, that blows.

PROBLEM #5: Sound Shut Off

I have to admit that OS/2’s 16-bit system sounds impressed me on my Sound Blaster 16, but when I’m running any Windows program, it’s as if my Sound Blaster were off, no sound in Windows, no sound in OS/2-- strange.

PROBLEM #6: HyperACCESS (Bonus Pak)

A terrible overlooked bug! How can you spell Pak without the ‘c’? Nah, just kidding... but after all this modem trouble I though that maybe I could use the modem program that comes in the bonus pak from now on (HyperACCESS). It doesn’t install - end of story. It just won’t accept the CD-ROM as the source installation drive!

PROBLEM #7: Unbearable Slowness

This is definitely one of the more important problems. With OS/2 my harddrive is almost constantly loading; I almost feel bad for it! It never loaded like this in Windows, probably because of my 2-meg Smartdrv cache, but lo and behold, there is no OS/2 equivalent of Smartdrv, causing things to become incredibly slow. One feature that really takes a beating is multimedia. I have a 10 second long 16-bit 44.1khz stereo WAV file that plays a tenth of a second of sound, then loads for a half second, then repeats until the file is over. It’s almost hard to tell what it is that’s playing. The same thing happens with AVI files (multimedia video).

PROBLEM #8: DOS is More Complete!

In addition to DriveSpace, I miss Scandisk, Defrag, Smartdrv, Edit, and other utilities IBM failed to include, they just throw in the bare basics.

PROBLEM #9: Incompatible with a lot of TSR’s

I used to use Mcafee’s Vshield TSR to protect myself from viruses, but screw that; it’s only useful if I’m gonna stay inside the DOS window I loaded it from... forever. Obviously similar TSR’s won’t work with everything either.

PROBLEM #10: Inconsistency between standards

All of my beautiful fonts, not compatible with OS/2 programs. OLE isn’t either! Neither is DDE! Great, you can have Windows, OS/2 and Windows on the same screen, but too bad they can’t take advantage of eachother’s features.

PROBLEM #11: Colorado Jumbo 250

I paid a couple hundred dollars for my tape drive and it’s not supported by OS/2! That’s pretty much all I can say!

PROBLEM #12: Uninstallation

I’m sick of this crap! Now how do I get rid of it? IBM doesn’t include an uninstall program with it’s OS as Microsoft does, so I have to format my hard drive and use a boot disk to reload everything onto my hard drive from tape. This is not exactly the “user friendly” way.

Well, to conclude these are problems that occurred in 2 days of use, there has to be more problems, since I still never got around to trying everything. I never used much of the Bonus Pak and I never got to try any games with it (I had to delete them to fit OS/2). Well basically OS/2 Warp is not a good buy and is not the future of computing. Undoubtedly Microsoft’s Windows 95 will not have most of the problems listed here, and I think that they will have a better chance... I can’t say though since I haven’t seen the new system.

But anyways... please distribute this file everywhere possible and try to keep it in its original archive if you can. Thanks a lot.

-Ben Zell (ben.zell@swcbbs.com)