AMD Bulldozer vs. Intel i7-2600 -- I don't get it!

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 05:18:46PM -0400, James Knott wrote:
> That was the case with OS/2 1.x, which was, prior to 1.3 mainly a
> product of Microsoft.  As for running on the 286, IBM had this
> peculiar concept of delivering what they promised the customer.  As
> they promised mulitasking etc. on the 286, that's what they
> delivered.  However, as I mentioned, DOS support was excellent, even
> if it took until 2.0 to deliver it.  Unlike on Windows, you could
> configure DOS memory management individually for each app, if
> needed.  You could even configure it to deliver more usable space
> than you could with real DOS.  If you were a developer, you could
> have images of various DOS versions to test with as well.  Now,
> Windows 3.0 and OS/2 2.0 came out at roughly the same time, but
> there was simply no comparison in capability.  OS/2 was much more
> stable, had better multitasking and could even run Windows as an
> application (which it was back in those days).
> 
> BTW, I used to do 3rd level OS/2 support at IBM and worked on the
> team that developed standard desktop systems for IBM Canada.  I also
> had to work with some apps on Windows 95 & NT.  There were far more
> problems with apps, stability etc. on Windows, compared to OS/2
> (essentially none).

OS/2 1.x only ran one DOS program at a time and not well.  Released in
1988.

OS/2 2.0 did much better, but was released in 1992.

Windows 3.0 used the 386, could run multiple DOS programs quite well at
the same time.  Released in May 1990.  About two years before OS/2 2.0.
A very long time in the computer world.

Windows 3.1 made it a bit better still, although not by a lot.

But really, windows 3.0 had a two year headstart on OS/2 for running
multiple DOS programs at the same time, and particularly well.  OS/2 was
also vastly more expensive.

So yes OS/2 2.x was a much better system than Windows, although the GUI
was an inconsistent mess in OS/2.  OS/2 was more expensive, was multiple
years later in having good DOS support and taking advantage of the 386.
That combined with IBM not really seeming interested in pushing it to
anyone (other than people wanting a GUI for 3270 applications at banks
and insurance companies) and Microsoft certainly prefering to push
windows resulted in the death of OS/2.

OS/2 1.x was irrelevant, and OS/2 2.x was too late.

-- 
Len Sorensen
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists