From comp.os.os2.advocacy Wed Jun 9 11:02:14 1993
From: david.mato...@yob.scci.com (David Matocha)
Date: 8 Jun 93 23:10:17 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.os2.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: HAL-PC NT vs OS/2 Shoot-out

    HAL-PC [the Houston Area League of PC users, 2nd largest users
group in the U.S. with 10,000 members) had a Windows NT vs OS/2
shoot-out last Friday evening with presentations by Microsoft and IBM.
In true Texas tradition these "shoot-outs" feature head to head
comparisons between competing products. As in an Old West shoot-out,
one competitor walks away with his head held high while the loser ends
up face-down in the dust. Such was the case last Friday.

    The audience consisted of a standing room only crowd of
approximately 1300 representing a cross section of HAL-PC members and
guests. Microsoft's Doug Davis, of the NT development team, spoke
first and began his presentation with a set of 'slides' presented from
a 486/66MHz PC running NT, followed by a brief tour of NT itself.

   Mr. Davis did not demo any DOS or Windows 3.x applications running
under NT. He did show how a user could change the mouse pointer from
the standard MS 'arrow' to an arrow with a wiggling tail or to Doug's
favorite, a galloping horse. Doug referred often to NT's security and
system administration features. During the NT presentation I kept
thinking that NT looked a great deal like Unix with a Windows
interface. The other impression that the Microsoft's presentation
left was that NT appeared fat, slow and boring...something that only a
network administrator could love.

   The OS/2 presentation by David Barnes of IBM was entirely
devoted to a tour of OS/2 2.1. David's presentation on a 486/33
machine w/16MB was lively and animated (literally). He first started
an animated graphical DOS application called Popeye in a window on the
OS/2 desktop. While pointing out to the audience that NT cannot run
graphical DOS applications in a window he opened various Windows and
OS/2 applications and pointed out that the hourglass never appeared
and that the animated DOS application 'Popeye' never missed a beat.

    David showed Windows 3.x applications, DOS applications and OS/2
applications including Wordperfect for DOS, the Far Side Calender for
Windows, Describe 4.0, and miscellaneous other applications all
running simultaneously on the desktop. He captured the graphical
screen image from 'Popeye' and pasted it into a Describe document
while pointing out that the DOS application Popeye continued running
even while the graphics screen was frozen for the clipboard copy.

    David also created a simple OS/2 applications from scratch in
about 5 minutes using drag and drop methods on Digitalks's Parts
product. Without typing any code he setup a control panel with a
slider, twist knob and digital display which was linked via DDE to a
Lotus for OS/2 worksheet. A pie chart from the worksheet had been
linked to a Describe document earlier in the presentation. As the
slide or knob was manipulated with the mouse, the digital display
would update, the corresponding cell in the Lotus Worksheet would
update and the pie chart in the Describe document would redraw. The
key point in this portion of the demonstration was that this entire
procedure was accomplished without writing any code, live, and in just
a few moments. Very impressive.

    Unlike the MS presentation, the IBM presentation was interrupted
by frequent applause. The noise level in the hall continued rising as
neighbors discussed the points that IBM was making. Not even a lockup
could slow things down. David shifted gears and talked about the
future of OS/2 including Symmetric Multiprocessing (planed to be out
this year), the Apple-IBM alliance, Taligent, the WorkPlaceOS, etc.

    In contrast to the NT presentation by Microsoft, the OS/2
presentation by IBM was lean, fast and exciting. The OS/2 multimedia
presentation "brought down the house". It was GREAT! At several
points there were two simultaneous real-time video + soundtrack pieces
running on screen simultaneously without video hardware assist. I
was very impressed.

  At the end of the presentations there was a question and answer
session. Many constructive questions were directed towards IBM. The
MS representatives, on the other hand, got grilled. One guy asked
Microsoft's representative, Doug Davis, a hypothetical question: If
NT sales do not live up to Microsoft's expectations, would Microsoft
change direction and drop NT like they did with OS/2 a couple of years
back? Doug replied: "I hope not."

   After the audience questions and answer session, the HAL-PC users
group meeting moderator asked the audience a few questions. He asked
how many people planned to upgrade to OS/2 2.1 right away. Hundreds
of individuals, about half the people in the audience, raised their
hands. He then asked how many people planned to move to NT. I saw
ONLY TWO PEOPLE raise their hands. Out of 1,300, TWO.

   This was not what I expected. With all of the hype and
Microsoft Marketing Muscle, I expected far more "votes" for NT. I
expect that this is the first time that majority of these people have
seen both NT and OS/2 V2.1 live and up close and this may possibly be
the reaction of more "average users" when they have a chance to see
these OS's for themselves.

    I only wish that Bill Gates could have been there to see it with
his own eyes.

David Matocha
Smartnet OS/2 Conference Moderator
david.mato...@yob.scci.com
dmato...@lobby.ti.com

Disclaimer: I speak for myself.