Review of OS/2 Warp 3.0

Submitted by Patrick on Tue, 06/05/2007 - 3:44pm.

This was originally published on July 8, 1995. Written by Roger Klien.

When I first began hearing about the newest version of OS/2, better known as Warp, I didn't give it a second thought. You see, I'm an avid Windows user and everyone of my Windows using buddies had warned me that OS/2 was nothing but a headache compared to good ol' Windows. They talked about slowness, installation problems, and lack of support for their favorite Windows apps.

Well, this held me back for awhile but I continued to hear more and more good things about this latest IBM operating system (not to mention the really cool commercials on TV where even nuns are getting Warped)! So finally, I cracked. I decided to give Warp a shot and try it out on a workstation at work. I'm a network administrator for a fortune 500 company and have a few extra machines at my disposal (I wouldn't dare install this on my workstation at home based on what I had heard about earlier versions the OS/2 product)!

To my amazement the installation went flawlessly and I had Warp up and running in about a half an hour. This didn't include time for repartitioning my hard drive but that was my decision. I wanted to have a "Windows" partition and a "Warp" partition. Using the boot manager utilities that came with the product made this a snap. By utilizing the boot manager like this I can either boot into "Warp" mode or "DOS" mode so that I can run my Windows setup. The version of Warp that I looked at didn't include Wi 2 but since I had an existing installation of Windows on my system I was still able to get this functionality. So now I can either boot into "DOS" mode and execute Windows or run Warp and then execute WinOS2 to run my Windows apps.

This first hitch I encountered was the first time I tried to executed WinOS2. Warp would go into a permanent state of limbo. I quickly discovered that this was due to the fact that I was running a PC speaker driver for Windows and when this driver would try to directly access the hardware Warp would lock. Warp tries to handle all hardware calls and obviously wasn't able to handle this. Once I figured this out Windows ran great under Warp and I didn't have any other problems.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm a network administrator so I obviously needed to get Warp up and running on my network. I jumped onto CompuServe and went to the NetWire forum for Novell where I was able to download the client drivers for Warp. In another ten minutes after downloading the software I had Warp talking on my network. The OS/2 Warp LAN Client product, which should be out just about now, is going to have network functionality built in.

For me, Warp's network support is where this product really began to shine! The fact that OS/2 can use network sockets allowed me to log into my network as several different users from the same workstation! For a network administrator this is heaven! This, combined with the fact that OS/2 is truly multi-threading, allowed me to be logged into one server as myself and then trouble shoot a users problem by being logged in as them in another window! No more logging in and back out every time I wanted to te a users account on the network!

Another great benefit of OS/2 is the fact that it uses multiple VDM's (Virtual DOS Machines). This means that every time a DOS window is opened up under OS/2 it looks to the operating system like it is a stand-alone machine. You can even have separate config.sys and autoexec.bat files for each window. The true test of this, and Warp's ability to multi-thread, was when it was time for me to do my monthly upgrade to a proprietary production application we have on the network. Usually this upgrade holds a station hostage for half a day while I continually run over and check on its progress. You see, the application won't allow anything else to be running on the machine, such as remote monitoring software, during the upgrade. This time I opened up a DOS window under Warp and started the upgrade. It ran flawlessly in the background while I went about my administration tasks such as checking my email, running various administration utilities, and logging in as other users in separate te DOS windows, etc. Everything ng ran smooth as silk. Only when I had multiple things running at one time did I notice any slow down and some of these processes where hitting the processor pretty hard.

Overall, I'm very impressed with Warp's ability to run Windows apps, multi-task, and handle network functionality. The install went great and it even set-up an icon for my favorite game Doom! (Yes it was installed on my work computer but for testing purposes only :-) ) Warp is definitely a strong product and I'm looking forward to see what functionality IBM adds to it next. As of right now I would say my time, at least at work, is probably spit evenly between running Warp and Windows. Although, when In a stable, true multi-threading environment, I have no other choice but to get Warped!

IBM Corporation 1000 NW 51st Street Boca Raton, FL 33431 (800) 799-7765 CompuServe: GO WARP URL: http://www.ibm.com/