FIRST IMPRESSIONS: OS/2 Goes on a Diet Big Blue targets Windows 3.0 with a leaner, meaner, and faster version of OS/2 by Stan Miastkowski When IBM announced OS/2 1.3 last October, many people immediately dubbed it OS/2 "Lite" because of its claimed ability to do more, faster, with lower RAM and hard disk drive requirements. IBM, of course, isn't into cute product names. The product that appeared on my desk in December is officially named OS/2 SE (for Standard Edition) 1.3. In many ways, it is OS/2 Lite. But as far as features and abilities are concerned, OS/2 1.3 is no lightweight. In its latest incarnation, OS/2 has been trimmed down to go one-on-one with Windows 3.0. It is an ironic situation indeed. After all, Microsoft developed OS/2. But the Redmond software mavens have all but abandoned OS/2 as the orders and bucks roll in for Windows 3.0. IBM isn't hitching a ride on the Windows bandwagon. The changes made to OS/2 for version 1.3 come from the coding wizards at IBM. And it's obvious that Big Blue isn't going to give up on OS/2 despite its lack of market acceptance (at least, so far). Red Herrings and Other Fish Ever since its introduction, OS/2 has been the operating system that users love to hate. Admittedly, it was pushed on a market that was largely quite happy with DOS. OS/2's early versions were slow and buggy and used huge amounts of RAM and hard disk space. More important, that nifty-looking Presentation Manager (PM) interface lacked the all-important applications that made it viable. Fortunately, all that has changed, but the perceptions haven't -- yet. The realities of operating environments for the 1990s often seem to depend on marketing pressures and user prejudices rather than technical details. OS/2 was widely criticized for requiring a minimum of 4 megabytes of RAM. True enough. But at the same time, Windows 3.0 users have been finding that while the graphical user interface runs in a 286-based system with a single megabyte, you really need at least 2 MB and, ideally, more. With retail prices for a megabyte of RAM hovering in the $50 range, the whole thing is a red herring. The bottom line is that both Microsoft and (especially) IBM want you to buy hardware. And getting the most from Windows and OS/2 often requires updated hardware. A Little Horse-Trading OS/2 indeed drops your basic system RAM requirements from 4 MB to 2 MB. That opens up a large potential market of lower-capacity systems for OS/2. Of course, there's a performance price to pay. Like Windows 3.0, OS/2 1.3's multitasking makes extensive use of swapping. In the ?OS2?SYSTEM? directory sits a deceptively small (1572-byte) program named SWAPPER.EXE. The swapper, along with numerous (although not-so- obvious) changes to the core operating-system code, is the key to OS/2 1.3's smaller memory needs and faster performance. OS/2 1.3's swapper is faster and more intelligent than its predecessors. It is essentially a system resource controller that makes sure that the maximum amount of RAM is available for applications. OS/2 1.3 requires less RAM because the swapper moves unneeded operating code into a hard disk file. Swapper also keeps the DOS Box code sitting on the hard disk until you double-click on the icon. During setup, OS/2 1.3 (as did earlier versions) creates space for a SWAPPER .DAT file on your hard disk that has a maximum size of 512K bytes. If you have a large hard disk, you can specify a swap file as large as you want. But there's a trade-off: Making the file larger can improve system performance, but making it too large can also degrade performance; it takes longer to write data into or read data from a huge file. It was easy to see that OS/2 1.3 kept my hard disk drive from sitting idly by. In fact, the amount of hard disk file swapping is truly amazing. But since OS/2 is a true multitasking operating system, the dancing red light on my hard disk drive didn't adversely affect overall system performance. What is the bottom line of RAM requirements? If your system has 2 MB of RAM, you can easily run OS/2 1.3 and at least two major applications. Getting Up and Running Setting up OS/2 1.3 takes time and patience. Some of the more irksome parts of the process have been eliminated, and a few new features have been added. The biggest decision that I had to make was whether to use OS/2's High Performance File System. If you're installing OS/2 on a hard disk that already has DOS on it and you want to run the dual boot feature (i.e., starting either DOS or OS/2 at boot time), you'll have to forgo the HPFS. But if you can forgo booting DOS, the HPFS is the only way to go. Although it's not new in version 1.3, it remains one of OS/2's hidden gems. The HPFS is fast, using on-the-fly location optimization and integrated disk caching to dramatically improve overall performance. It's like having one of those expensive hardware- caching disk drive controllers hooked up to your system. Also new in OS/2 1.3 is selectable setup. Unlike the previous OS/2 setup utilities, 1.3 didn't ask me whether it should add serial-device support, retrieve-command support (a quick way of recalling previously entered commands), or the command reference help. Instead, it assumed that I wanted all these features. I was given the choice of disabling them later on when the setup utility asked me if I wanted to use the default configuration or customize it. The default configuration is one area where it's possible to fine-tune 1.3's memory requirements. OS/2 is a hard disk space hog. It needs 11 MB of storage for a full- fledged installation. If your hard disk space is tight, you can forgo a few features (like the command reference). But you still need 8 MB of hard disk space for a minimum configuration. Printers and Fonts One exceedingly welcome and long-awaited addition to OS/2 1.3 is a printer setup step during installation. In earlier versions, its absence was understandable because OS/2 printer drivers were few and far between. That's changed with a vengeance; OS/2 1.3 supports nearly 100 printers, along with a couple dozen plotters. And it's not just IBM printers that are supported. The list is quite long and complete. Most important for serious users, OS/2 1.3 now comes with full- featured drivers for the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet (all flavors) and PostScript printers. It's in the PostScript realm that OS/2 1.3 really shines. In the spring of 1990, IBM decided to implement Adobe font technology across its entire product line, and OS/2 1.3 is the first to see the fruits of this decision. OS/2 1.3 includes Adobe Type Manager, which has twelve "core" scalable outline fonts that come in matching screen and printer flavors. If you're using a PostScript printer, you get true WYSIWYG. It's a great leap forward for OS/2. REXX the King? For advanced users, another feature new to OS/2 1.3 is REXX. REXX isn't new but has been confined to IBM's mainframe and minicomputer markets. It's a general-purpose procedural language that Big Blue has designated as the standard language for developing interpreted procedures for all Systems Application Architecture systems, which means all IBM products. Essentially, REXX is a sophisticated batch language that offers a myriad of features for those who (understandably) find DOS's batch language insufficient. However, if you are like most end users, you'll never use it. Speed from the Starting Gate Is OS/2 1.3 faster than previous versions? Definitely. Besides the intelligent swapper, the core operating system's crucial loader has been completely rewritten. It can now load data in larger blocks than its predecessors, resulting in fewer I/O cycles. Also new is IBM's implementation of the previously unused data-compaction abilities of OS/2. Taken together, it means faster performance. How much faster? IBM says that in a "memory-constrained environment" (meaning 2 MB), file accesses are "significantly faster" than in previous versions of OS/2. Using a relatively wimpy 20-MHz 386-based AT clone with a fast (15-millisecond) hard disk drive, I found an overall performance increase over OS/2 1.2 of from 25 percent to 40 percent using standard OS/2 applications, such as Lotus 1-2-3/G and the DeScribe Word Publisher; your mileage may vary. According to IBM, OS/2 1.3 is even faster in network access. I wasn't able to test the claims, but an IBM spokesperson told me that it now loads programs off a network server "two to three times faster" than version 1.2. Tying It All Together After several false starts and disappointing incremental upgrades (punctuated by a few public spats between IBM and Microsoft), OS/2 is finally an integrated and complete product. It took IBM to do the job. Version 1.3 is remarkably stable and bug-free. I used it with a wide range of the increasingly available OS/2 applications and threw it curves by opening multiple copies of the same application. Even with a dozen programs open and running concurrently, OS/2 never even flinched; I encountered no incomprehensible error messages or system hang-ups. The same can't be said for Windows 3.0. OS/2 remains the only true multitasking environment. There are realities that can't be overlooked. Sure, you can run OS/2 1.3 in a system with 2 MB. But if you want to get some real work done with several different applications, you're better off with 4 MB or more. The same can be said about Windows 3.0. The battle isn't over yet. By now, it's clear that OS/2 isn't going to take the operating-system market by storm. But the argument that it does not work, lacks printer drivers, or uses too many system resources is now moot. It still has a long way to go to overcome the Windows 3.0 juggernaut, but unlike Windows (which is cobbled onto a now-ancient operating system), OS/2 SE 1.3 along with PM is a next- generation integrated operating environment. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Stan Miastkowski is the BYTE senior editor for new products. You can reach him on BIX as "stanm." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- OS/2 SE 1.3: $340; upgrade from prior versions, $100; upgrade from DOS 3.0 or higher, $285 Requirements: IBM AT, PS/2, or compatible with at least 2 MB of RAM and between 8 and 11 MB of free hard disk storage. IBM Corp. U.S. Marketing and Services 1133 Westchester Ave. White Plains, NY 10604 (800) 426-2468 (914) 642-3000