SWITZERLAND REPORT


by Rene B. Sloot
Oberwil, Switzerland
rbsloot@ibm.net

You win, I lose

While writing this title for my column, I wasn't dreaming of this coming true the last couple of days, when I read the Apple news. It's up to you this time to decide who wins and who loses. At least we know now how expensive (or cheap) a soul can be. A company's soul or heart, whatever you like, has a precise value of 150 million US$. The war is over. Really? What happens if the Apple community decides NOT to buy the "promised" upcoming office suite? Let's wait and see.

OS/2 is dead, long live OS/2

After the press articles in Germany and Switzerland, concerning what Bill Etherington said about OS/2 there was a real happening going on here. Common Germany interviewed Richard Seibt from IBM Germany and published his comments on their home page (http://www.libra.de/common). Unfortunately, this interview was only published in German, so I decided to do a (quick and dirty) translation into English and put it on the Common Switzerland home page (http://www.common.ch/os2alive). Also, I saw a mail message from IBM Switzerland to one (or more) of the major Swiss banks, confirming what Richard Seibt said. The conclusion (for me at least) of all this noise is, that most of the people I spoke with during the last couple of weeks, only saw the bad articles in the press but didn't see any of the other IBM statements saying that OS/2 is and will stay alive. Anyway, I hope that IBM also learned it's lesson and that they better don't make any statement, than such that can be misunderstood. BTW. I read an article in the German Computer Bild about OS/2. It was a little one quoting Bill "Etheridge". This might demonstrate how journalists work and produce their articles about IBM and OS/2. At least they know how to write Microsoft and seems to be the most important thing.

Where do the hits come from?

A little while ago, I checked our (Common Switzerland) home page and found out that OS/2 is very well being used. The percentage of hits on our site is 38% compared to W95 with 41%. A big surprise for me was, that NT only scored with 6%. The rest came from other systems like HP, Sun, Apple, Linux and others. Specially if you know, that Common is an IBM user group, mainly concentrated on the AS/400. But we also serve OS/2 and RS/6000. It would be great to know from other sites, what hit-sources they have. You let me know?


Unfortunately, it is very quiet here in summer and therefore there's not much to say about OS/2 in Switzerland. The biggest event coming soon, will be the AS/400 announcements on August 19 and that's what everybody is waiting for. I hope, that we will get new OS/2 clients but don't know currently. Whenever there is something coming, we will stay tuned at the Common homepage as the next OS/2 CONNECT will arrive when this event is history again.

Not really happening anything here is what we call "saure Gurkenzeit". Wonder if you find this in any dictionary. Hope you enjoyed or will enjoy your holiday. Mine will come, when you're all back to work in October.

Please do not hesitate to send me any news and information pertaining to Switzerland you would like mentioned in this column. I'll take correspondence in English, German and Dutch (and will respond in the same language).

- Rene B. Sloot


Rene is an AS/400 technical consultant, an IBM Certified OS/2 Engineer, and a proponent of OS/2 on the PC. Rene also serves on the board of directors for the 'COMMON Switzerland' (AS/400 user group).