OS/2 vs. NT: The Shoot Out In Texas (HAL-PC)

[DiskingRound]

While scouting through YouTube, I came across a video on OS/2 vs. Windows NT.

I don't know if there already is a topic about this. If there isn't then great!
Here are some pictures:

The event is supposedly from June of 1993. Any NT material made before July 1993 is interesting for me as it means the NT demoed is before the RTM of July 24, meaning it's (most likely) a beta.

Evolving the Windows family. Basically, the sucessor to NT3.x at the time was codenamed "Cairo" and the sucessor to regular 3.1 was codenamed "Chicago".

The future Windows NT codenamed "Cairo". Pretty self explanatory.

The Workstation Locked screen (thanks 3155ffGd for deciphering)

The desktop with everything minimized. I like the wallpaper.

The program manager. One of the differences I spotted was the command prompt icon. The icon is the cmd icon rather than the MS-DOS icon.

The command prompt. From what I can make out the dates probably read 5/22/93, 02:34p.
Although I don't usually pay much attention to OS/2, I decided to give it a try anyway. Which is why this is in the General Discussion section rather than the Windows 2000/NT/XP section.

Here is the desktop. I like that wallpaper as well.

The system settings. Note the Windows 3.0 winver icon (circled in red). This looks somewhat different than the final release of OS/2 2.1.

Some serial driver from 1993. From what I can make out the revision no. is probably 8.112.
If you find more in the video, post here and I will add it ASAP.

[Schezo]

The Windows 3.0 Winver icon from OS/2 2.0 is about "Win-OS/2 Setup" in this case. It's in the final version as well:


(Image from GUIdebook)

Other icons from OS/2 2.0 about Win OS/2 show that icon, for example "Win-OS/2 Full Screen".

Future versions of OS/2 would use a different icon (a variation of the Windows logo).


Anyway, isn't this the video about the comparison between NT 3 and OS/2 2.0 (where MS shot themselves in the foot)? It does look a lot like it.

[3155ffGd]

The Workstation ?????? screen.

I think it says "Workstation Locked".

As such, the last line probably reads "Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to unlock this workstation."

[DiskingRound]

The Windows 3.0 Winver icon from OS/2 2.0 is about "Win-OS/2 Setup" in this case. It's in the final version as well:


(Image from GUIdebook)

Well, in any case, the picture I showed of the control panel is different than the RTM of OS/2 2.1, I noticed. It also appears to be different from OS/2 2.0. Interesting...

[Schezo]

Well, in any case, the picture I showed of the control panel is different than the RTM of OS/2 2.1, I noticed. It also appears to be different from OS/2 2.0. Interesting...

The control panel doesn't seem quite different (at least to me). The only difference I can notice is that the "Power" icon is missing.

[DiskingRound]

Well, in any case, the picture I showed of the control panel is different than the RTM of OS/2 2.1, I noticed. It also appears to be different from OS/2 2.0. Interesting...

The control panel doesn't seem quite different (at least to me). The only difference I can notice is that the "Power" icon is missing.

IMO it looks quite different. The text seems to be bolder/bigger. The icons on the desktop are different. So is it just customized to look like that, or is it what the OS looks like?

[Schezo]

Well, in any case, the picture I showed of the control panel is different than the RTM of OS/2 2.1, I noticed. It also appears to be different from OS/2 2.0. Interesting...

The control panel doesn't seem quite different (at least to me). The only difference I can notice is that the "Power" icon is missing.

IMO it looks quite different. The text seems to be bolder/bigger. The icons on the desktop are different. So is it just customized to look like that, or is it what the OS looks like?

Considering how in the video there is a demonstration about the customizability of OS/2, I may have has been customized.

About the text, we can't really know from the quality of the video, although I believe it is possible to set the text bold on labels in some way or another.

From experience with dealing with low quality scans, if it were bold, it would have been somewhat more unreadable (compare the title bar text to the icon name text).

[os2fan2]

The Windows icon leads to the "DOS Settings" for Win-OS/2. The same icon was used in OS/2 2.1 etc, and replaced with the four-light coloured icon in OS/2 3.0.

A good deal of the presentation was that Windows NT ran mostly on a Kodochrome, while OS/2 was available in the shops, and did pretty much the same stuff in way less memory. It still does. The current Windows boot-from-cd-to-shell runs into 70 or 80 MB if you are tight with the code. You can get a decent OS/2 desktop from much less than that - and in a ramdisk to boot.

OS/2 was bootable to desktop long before Windows, ran DOS apps much better, including graphics in a screen.

[milatchi]

The middle of last year I installed OS/2 Warp v3 on a 486, just to play with it. After using it for a night, I can say that back in '94 I would have taken either Windows 3.1 or Windows NT 3.5 over OS/2 without a second thought.

[xelloss]

The middle of last year I installed OS/2 Warp v3 on a 486, just to play with it. After using it for a night, I can say that back in '94 I would have taken either Windows 3.1 or Windows NT 3.5 over OS/2 without a second thought.

I doubt it. The additional RAM you needed to run NT decently was as expensive as the rest of your PC.
As for Win3.1, well: Warp 3 was at least as good, since it *included* Win3.1.
In 1994 OS/2 Warp was quite popular.
Of course everything changed with the release of Windows 95.