[Am-info] Re: adopting alternative OSes

[madodel@ptdprolog.net]

In <540851C8-78F3-11D7-BA98-003065A24662@accidentalexpert.com>, on
04/27/03 at 02:00 PM,
   Mitch Stone <mitch@accidentalexpert.com> said:

>I can't pretend to speak to internal IBM management issues, except to 
>observe that IBM's PC division was/is part of the greater company, and 
>if the company was committed to OS/2, so would the PC division be 
>committed. (People do after all generally prefer to keep their jobs.)

Sorry but that is not how IBM works.  Its a bunch of fiefdoms only
concerned about their own bottom line and bonuses.  Its truly amazing the
company manages to do as well as it has.  The top management encouraged
competition.  There is no unified IBM organization.  True they all suck at
general marketing as a rule, but they love to schmooze with CEOs, so they
are only good at selling into mega corporations.  But then that means the
CEO makes a decision based on what he hears from his local IBM marketing
contact.  These bastards have actually told companies not to buy OS/2, and
this goes as far back as 1996/97, and maybe back to 1995.  


>I don't entirely agree that the IBM name worked against OS/2 in the OEM 
>world. It was after all the IBM name which give credibility to the 
>entire PC clone market. As we all certainly remember, PC clones were  for
>years marketed as "IBM-PC compatibles" and shipped with IBM PC-DOS  (aka
>MS-DOS). What did work against IBM was of course Microsoft's  half-nelson
>on the OEM industry. But, if any company had the  wherewithal to break
>that lock, it was IBM. In order to do so, they  would have been forced to
>make choices we probably all probably agree  they should not have been
>forced to make, that is, between Windows and  OS/2. They would have
>needed the guts to get the glory and  unfortunately they didn't want the
>glory badly enough.

The OS/2 people did.  They busted their asses to make it the best damn
product out there.  It ran rings around that half-baked windows95.   But
the hardware people were in Gate's pocket.  IBM had sold a big system to
Bank of Brazil a few years ago.  From what I heard they could have sold
thousands of servers and IBM workstations as well.  All they had to do was
preload OS/2 on them.  They refused.  Compaq was willing to do it to get
the sale.  Compaq has a whitepaper on their site about how they were the
"Premier" hardware provider for OS/2. 
<http://www.compaq.com/support/techpubs/whitepapers/ecg1240798.html>  But
that was only in selected markets.  You won't find OS/2 preloaded on a
consumer Compaq.  No one wants to cross microshaft.  And I'm sure no one
wanted an "IBM OS/2" splash screen coming up on every boot of their
non-IBM pcs.  PC-DOS was not sold to OEMs initially.  Only MS-DOS.  That's
how Gate's raked in his billions.  IBM didn't see any market in the
non-IBM clones, so they let microsoft have that market entirely to
themselves.  Can you believe how stupid and shortsighted they were? 


Mark

-- 

 From the eComStation Desktop of: Mark Dodel

Warpstock 2002, In the home of OS/2 - Austin, Texas.  Were you there?   http://www.warpstock.org

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