Subj : Re: The Internet that could have been...
To   : Skylar
From : poindexter FORTRAN
Date : Fri Apr 12 2024 09:38:00

-=> Skylar wrote to Nightfox <=-

 Sk> GeoWorks performed *so* much better on a 286 than Windows 3.0 or 3.1
 Sk> ever could. I had high hopes, but it never gained traction.


 I had a 386sx/16 with 3 mb of RAM, and GeoWorks ran nicely. One thing
 people haven't mentioned is that it had a set of nice GUI apps - the
 word processor was decent, it had a little flat file DB, and a couple
 of productivity apps that I used.

 > I often thought it was a bummer that Windows became the dominant
 > computer platform when there were better alternatives available.

I think the later versions came with TCP/IP access and some sort of
browser, but by then it was too late. All other OSes were run over by
third-party support in Windows.

 Sk> I bought OS/2 and gave it a try around 1993. I thought it had potential
 Sk> but we had major driver compatility issues. By then I'd been
 Sk> programming for MS-DOS using Turbo Pascal and Turbo C++ for a few years
 Sk> and much preferred staying in DOS when using a "PC".

In the corporate world, OS/2 rocked. I worked in an all-IBM shop from
1991-1993, and with OS/2 1.3 and 2.0, I could run Word and Excel, a
comm app, connect to an AS/400 over twinax, share files over a token
ring network, and all of this on a 386/25 with 8 mb of RAM.

Later, managing a Netware network, all of the apps for managing the
network were DOS console apps. You could run multiple apps without
worrying about memory - or create a custom DOS environment if you needed
it.

It wasn't until TCP/IP that OS/2 fell behind. Windows 3.11 had the apps
and built-in TCP/IP.






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