Virtual OS/2 International Consumer Education

November 1998


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So OS/2 rises Again and Again from the Ashes

An editorial view from Mark Dodel, editor of the VOICE Newsletter editor@os2voice.org

The Aurora beta - now officially christened "OS/2 Warp Server for e-business" has finally arrived. For a many time reported deceased operating system, it certainly appears quite lively to me. There is a brief review of Aurora - the Next Warped Generation on the next page. :-) If you want to see an OS/2 Warp 5 workstation version please check out the 21Warp site - http://www.jmast.se/21warp/ and pre-order a copy of Warp 5. Also go to Indelible Blue - http://www.indelible-blue.com/ibapps/webnav.nsf/all/DF5A82F1BD2A52988525669F0063AAB7 and take the 'OS/2 "Aurora" Client' survey. Here are two great opportunities for the individuals to make a difference.

But the good news doesn't stop with Aurora. This month has seen the release of Star Office 5.0 for OS/2 ( http://www.stardivision.com ). And not only is it a full fledged competitor to Office97, but Star Division has licensed it for free for non-commercial use. The only catch is the 75 Meg download. For $39.95 you can purchase it on a CD with manual. And yes it has Word97 import filters. :-)

And the good news continues on. In the USENET group comp.os.os2.games of all places was a post looking for beta testers for a commercial display driver by Kendall Bennett, Director of Engineering for SciTech Software, Inc. http://www.scitechsoft.com. They are porting their existing windows/Linux SciTech Display Doctor to OS/2. They say this GRADD based driver will support all the cards/chipsets currently supported in their windows/Linux version - http://www.scitechsoft.com/sdd_hrdw_linux.html as well as some additions. In the thread on c.o.o.games it was revealed that this driver will eventually have OpenGL hardware support and possibly 3D support. Finally OS/2 users won't have to rely on only MGA and Elsa for decent video drivers. And VOICE is sponsoring a SpeakUp event with the folks from SciTech on November 30 at 8PM. For more information on attending VOICE IRC events/meetings go to the - http://www.os2voice.org/meetinginfo.html

While we are on the subject of VOICE sponsored events, be sure to check out the new VOICE Future events Calendar. We have quite a diverse offering for the next several months and are working on scheduling even more for the future. If you have a topic or speaker you'd like to see covered please contact our Liaison Officer - Judy McDermott at judymc@ameritech.net

Finally, there is now renewed interest in publishing an updated version of David Moskowitz's OS/2 Warp Unleashed book. Daniel Goggia (Dannyg0s2@aol.com) started the ball rolling by putting out a request for folks to contact a potential publisher { MMEEHAN/0005955361@MCIMAIL.COM (Mike Meehan Prentice Hall-PTR) } that has expressed interest in the project. People responded, voicing the need for a new reference book for Warp. Now David has put out a request for input on what OS/2 users would like to see covered in the new edition. Please direct all comments to David Moskowitz davidm2@ibm.net or PCRDAVIDM@aol.com. To see the actual letters about this, please go to the letters page.

In this issue of the VOICE Newsletter we have a report on The Annual OS/2 Conference 25/9 in Sweden by Bjorn Soderstrom. There is also a review of Hopkins FBI by Rob Burton; A review of Web Willy Watch 3.0 by myself; and Don Eitner writes about "OS/2 Users : All Talk", in his VIEW from the End(User) column. We also have two new interviews with OS/2 users this month.

No complaints here this month from this happy camper. But.... if you want to VOICE your opinion on the sorry state of the computer operating system market, write to:

Joel I. Klein
Assistant Attorney General
Antitrust Division
U.S. Department of Justice
601 D Street, NW
Washington, DC 20530

The email address is antitrust@justice.usdoj.gov

If you would like to personally let IBM know that you want them to support OS/2 and ask them to release a new version of OS/2 send an email to:
John Stenson ssadm281@us.ibm.com
Network Computing Software

Finally if you want to let Lou Gerstner's office know how you feel you can do so by pointing your favorite web browser to http://www.ibm.com/cgi-bin/email-lvg.pl You'll probably then get a response from someone in John's office anyway, so I'm not sure what difference it makes.

Mark Dodel
Editor, VOICE Newsletter
editor@os2voice.org


Features
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