In ,
Gene E. Bloch wrote:
On 12/01/2011, SC Tom posted:
"BillW50" wrote in message
...
In ,
Tom Lake wrote:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in
message ...
In message ,
Mortimer writes:

No, I would say it _is_ Microsoft's, for making an OS (or OS
variant) which can't use older drivers. Why should hardware
manufacturers have to keep producing new drivers (especially for
kit they no longer make - don't know if that's the case in this
case)?

Why should MS (or ANY OS maker) support all old hardware ad
infinitum? In order to advance the OS, keep it able to use the
latest hardware and keep it secure, some things must be left
behind or you'd end up with a huge, ungainly mess. If the
manufacturer doesn't support the newest OS, then MS certainly
doesn't have the resources to write drivers for every piece of
obsolete equipment out there. Tom L

In the early days, an OS was screwed big time if it didn't support
the legacy factor. You can have the world's greatest OS ever seen,
but it is totally worthless if it doesn't support the past. Same is
true today. If you burn bridges as you go, you will always lose.

Since most of the old people at Microsoft has retired. The new
replacements just don't know any better. And I see Microsoft
getting into trouble because of this. Even Microsoft had to layoff
people in recent times because of this (the first time in history).
And it isn't going to get better for Microsoft until they relearn
this lesson. And if they don't... well either Linux or the Mac (or
something unknown to us today) will just take over.


I don't think Linux or Mac (or something unknown) will ever displace
Microsoft in my lifetime, but I'm sure someday in the future, it may
be replaced as the top dog.

Years ago (many, many), I tried OS/2 Warp for a little while. After
installing it and rebooting, I no longer had a CD-ROM drive. No OS/2
drivers for it, and none from (IIRC) Panasonic either. The only
drives that were native in OS/2 were Matsu****a and a couple of
others, and even though they own Panasonic now, they either didn't
then or the two drives weren't close enough for the Matsu****a
drivers to work with my drive. I tried OS/2 with Windows 3.1
(upgrade) thinking that might solve the problem, but no joy there
either.

Another bad point was that I had an IBM Big Blue thermal printer,
and I couldn't get either version of OS/2 to recognize it either.
IBM OS won't print to an INM printer? What's up with that? After a
couple on months of searching and using it (it was stable and
speedy. No wonder; it had no drivers taking up memory), I finally
went back to Windows. I've tinkered with other OSes over the years,
but have never left Windows for good. Works fine for me. If there's
something about it I don't like (and believe me, there's plenty), I
can usually figure out a workaround or find a third party app to get
'er done.

I once worked on some software for OS/2. Someone else was the video
expert writing drivers for a few video cards; this was before the card
manufacturers provided drivers.

I suggested to an appropriate person that IBM should be supporting
some other video cards ('twas a long time ago, so I've forgotten the
details). The reply was "We're not in the business of providing
drivers for non-IBM cards". I said no more...

And OS/2 has evaporated.

BTW, I did get to see a demo of some media-like software running under
that system; IIRC, it was really beautiful.

I know a great deal about IBM's OS/2. That problem was only the tip of
the iceberg. IBM hated Microsoft for not trying to make all IBM clones
obsolete (as that would cut Microsoft's own throat as well as all third
parties). And IBM had to pay Microsoft for each OS/2 copy they sold (IBM
even lied to Microsoft about how little they sold when they were
bragging far higher numbers to others). Microsoft had taken them to
court and IBM had to pay Microsoft the bragging numbers they were
saying.

Oh course IBM was really ticked. And they were hell bent on removing all
Microsoft code within OS/2 (so they didn't have to pay Microsoft a
dime). The problem was they broke OS/2 severely at any attempt to put
their own code in. And this is the biggest reason among a few others why
OS/2 had failed. And IBM failed to remove all of the Microsoft code in
OS/2.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3