Robert Smits wrote:
On Saturday 04 November 2006 13:22, Darryl Gregorash wrote:
OS/2 is irrelevant in the present discussion. IBM's decision to dump OS/2 was made by the marketing division, who apparently still believe that the mainframe is the last word in computer resources (after all, IBM did dump its PC division).
All the proof, as if we needed any that you can't trust proprietary software companies to care about their customers....
Moreover, OS/2 was originally jointly developed by IBM and Microsoft -- OS/2 is what IBM thought it should be, while Windows 3.1 and its successors are what Microsoft wanted it to be.
Slight correction....I think you should say Windows 95 here. OS/2 was written to be and was compatible with Win 3.1 and 3.11.
Actually, it ran a modified version of Windows as an application. IBM tried to keep up with the various flavours of Win32 extensions, but MS kept changing them. You could get some versions (2.11 and Warp 3) of OS/2 without built in Windows support. With those versions you could install your own copy of Windows 3.11.