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October 1998

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October 9, 1998

** Stardock News **
October 1998

Topics:
From the Trenches...
IBM moves forward with OS/2
PMINews 2.0 for OS/2
Object Desktop 2.0
Warpstock nearly here
Entrepreneur private news...
Starcraft: Retribution release date...

This month's issue written by: Brad Wardell

From the Trenches...
For those of you who are into PC gaming, I have a column I write every 2 weeks called "From the Trenches". It's at Gampen.com (http://www.gamepen.com/trenches). The latest issue is about why games are late and buggy.

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IBM moves forward with OS/2...
Once again there is question about what OS/2's future is. A leaked IBM confidential document revealed that IBM is pushing on JAVA in order to ensure that customers have multiple OS options other than OS/2 at some future date. This was taken as "proof" that IBM is abandoning OS/2.

In reality, IBM is looking to further segment its development efforts as the PC software market continues to expand. Aurora, the upcoming IBM OS/2 server will have a ton of new features including JFS (a new file system) and a great deal of great configuration tools for servers.

Warp 2000, the next version of the client is not officially announced yet but Stardock and IBM are in negotiation to work together on enhancing the client. Warp 2000 would essentially be Aurora minus HPFS386 and other server features to get the price down. The client's availability is almost certain because of the simple fact that OS/2 Warp 4, out of the box, is not year 2000 compliant. Warp 2000 will also probably be a lot slimmer than OS/2 Warp 4. This is all rumor here folks but don't expect voice type or Opendoc or other largely unused components to be in there (except maybe as unsupported Bonuspak features). This is not official from IBM by any means, just from having talked to people in the know.

At the same time, http://www.os2ss.com/win32-os2/ where you can find the new version of Win32 to OS/2 converters, has made it possible to play Win32 games under OS/2. Ironically, this means that an Warp 2000, with its SMP support, may actually be a pretty killer end user OS. With every major program written for Linux being rewritten for OS/2 (via Xfree86), there's really nothing users are going without.

Visit http://www.os2ss.com if you want to see a very popular OS/2 page in action. Another place to find OS/2 stuff out at is http://www.joeuser.com.

* * *

PMINews 2.0 is finally out!
After almost a year in beta, PMINews 2.0 is here and it's totally free of charge for existing PMINews customers. Basically, Stardock and Southsoft agreed that PMINews 1.x wasn't what we had hoped for. Both companies are known for producing excellent quality software and felt that PMINews 1.0 just didn't live up to those standards. Not that it kept it from being one of the most popular OS/2 news readers or having won Editor's Choice awards from OS/2 Inside and 32bits Online. But with the release of 2.0, we feel that if you want to have the best OS/2 news reader, you need to have PMINews 2.0 and to make up for what we felt was lacking in 1.0, we have made 2.0 free for existing 1.x users. And we are backing up our belief that it is the best OS/2 news reader by making the free demo version available from day 1.

Visit http://www.stardock.com to download the demo.

* * *

Object Desktop 2.0 in manufacturing...
I hope you're going to Warpstock because that's when we're releasing Object Desktop 2.0 (you can pre order it by calling 1-800-672-3338 or by ordering from our website http://www.stardock.com). At Warpstock, myself and Kris Kwilas (who maintained the OS/2 Warp 4 FAQ) will be selling Object Desktop 2.0 in person.

Version 2.0 is pretty incredible, check out this screen shot:
http://www.stardock.com/products/od20/megashot.gif

* * *

Warpstock nearly here..
October 17. That's when Warpstock starts in Chicago. I highly recommend going. It's just a really fun place to be, the way Comdex used to be I guess you could say. Go to http://www.warpstock.org to register.

* * *

Entrepreneur private news...
We're working on Entrepreneur 1.5 and it's going to be made available for on-line purchase download when it comes out. We are also starting to think about what might be in Entrepreneur II (which wouldn't be out for quite a long time). We'd love to hear from you.

Entrepreneur Expansion pack is already out and we're going to have a game night on October 30 (Friday) starting at 7PM EST. We're going to try to set up a superbowl type tournament...stay tuned.

If you don't have the expansion pack, you'll probably want to get it as it has cards not available in the standard version of Entrepreneur which are pretty useful in multiplayer games. Visit the website to order/download it.

* * *

Starcraft: Retribution...
Okay, here's the scoop, no one -- not even the game mags, know this yet. GT Interactive and Stardock teamed up to produce the add-on to Blizzard's best selling Starcraft strategy game. In it, you play 3 new campaigns in which you must recover a sacred object. Not only does it come with new campaigns but also with over 120 high quality multiplayer maps. To ensure that the quality was top notch, we went and hired the original voice actors from Starcraft to reprise their roles. If you read any game mags, you've probably seen ads "Starcraft Retaliation" but the name recently got changed since GTI's lawyers were afraid of trademark issues with another game called Retaliation. Starcraft: Retribution should be out by the end of the month at all computer stores.

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