OS/2 a quarter century on: Why IBM lost out and how Microsoft won

[Wayne]

Basically they lost out because MS blackmailed OEM PC makers (including IBM!) with higher licence fees if they pre-installed anything but windows!

OS/2 Warp 4 was a far superior OS to Windows!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11...2_25years_old/

[DBelton]

I agree totally.

I ran OS/2 Warp for years running a BBS system. One machine had a 8 port serial card in it running Ray Gwinn's fossil drivers, and two more machines each with 4 serial ports also running the fossil drivers.

I couldn't even hardly run 2 nodes on one machine with Windows, but OS/2 handled 8 without even a hiccup. Could have run more if I could have found another 8 port card cheap, but it was a micro channel machine and adapters were outrageous for them.

Plus, Windows sure didn't like my ISDN adapters which OS/2 ran flawlessly. It would bond the 2 64k channels automatically when needed, and handled 128k transfers without even much configuration changes. Windows just got sick and barfed all over the place.

[Dan]

Sadly, history has a tendency to repeat itself. <....>

[jpollard]

Yep - happening with ARM as we speak...

Hope it fails this time.