The guys at the Cincinnati OS/2 User's Group were hosting the local demonstrations of Connecting the World with OS/2 Warp 4 here in Ohio.

The following enumerates what I, as a relatively inexperienced OS/2 user, learned about Merlin during my hour and a half talk with the presenters.

This page is dedicated to my loving wife, who actually stood around in CompUSA for an hour and a half looking at CD-ROM covers about how to learn to speak French without complaining, hittting me, or gnawing her arm off in an attempt to escape.

Features:

• As expected, OS/2 Warp 4 is completely backward compatible.

• Warp still sports Crash Protection(tm), whereby each application is given its own space in memory, so that should it crash it won't take the whole house down, unlike Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 when running 16-bit apps.

• Warp 4 supports HPFS, as always, but can also read/exist on FAT and VFAT hard drives. VFAT is a stop gap adjustment to the FAT system that allows the use of long filenames and smaller sector sizes enabling the usage of larger partitions (on the order of Gigabytes); it is primarily supported by Windows 95.

• OS/2 Warp 4 can run DOS, MS-Windows, native OS/2, and Java applications. A version of Sun Microsystem's Java(tm) language, Java for OS/2, has been built in to the Operating System. Warp also still comes bundled with the REXX programming language. Btw, IBM's latest version of PC-DOS supports REXX, so you can run your REXX crapplets in OS/2 and DOS!
• Have you heard you can talk to your computer? If not, you've not been reading anything about OS/2 recently. OS/2 Warp 4 has IBM's VoiceType(tm) Dictation built right in, and for a limited time Warp 4 comes with a sound-reducing spiffy-lookin' microphone. Not only is this something that can really be hyped, but it actually works. The demonstration took place in a crowded noisy computer store, complete with ambient background chit-chat and Public Address systems periodically blaring, and OS/2 quite consistently and amazingly responded to the voice of the presenter. Various libraries are available for specialized vocabularies, such as Medical or Legalese.

• Warp still comes with the Bonus Pak free o' charge. This includes IBM Works and some Lotus application, I think.

• Warp 4 also comes with the Application CD, which contains over 80 applications. Some are shareware, others are freeware, and yet others are encoded full-pack versions (send the company your Credit Card number and they'll gladly tell you how to unlock the encrypted software and send you the manuals. Some of the applications you get are Partition Magic, an off-line mail viewer, a utility package that'll help you get your system configured just right (or do it for you if you prefer), and (Hey Granger-boy, this is for you!) a Visual Basic recompiler program, so that you can port your VB crapplets to OS/2! And there are about 76 other nifty things you get ranging from entertainment, through educational stuff and utilities, to Internet software.

• But wait, there's more!! OS/2 Warp 4 also comes with a Device Driver CD. Can't find a driver for one of your boards or devices? Pop in the CD and scan through the billions and billions (thanks Carl) of OS/2 drivers just waiting to be installed on your hard drive, and if it's not on the CD, just click on the hypertext link (as long as your modem's hooked in), and you'll be instantly shot off to the manufacturer's Web site where you can download all the requisite software. All the info on the Device Driver CD is in HTML, so you don't need a specific word processor or some arcane application to read it. Any old browser will do!

Neato Stuff I Learned:

• Let's be honest. Windows NT is quite a good Operating System, even though it is made by Microsoft. Why is that you ask? Because it started out as OS/2. Way back when IBM and Microsoft joined forces to create the next generation Operating System, OS/2. They created Windows as an intermediate system to get everyone gui at home, while implementing OS/2 in the business arena. Eventually, everyone would be herded like a bunch of Nietzschian cattle toward OS/2, but Bill Gate$ saw the great demand for Windows and the ever-willing beguiled audience eagerly awaiting the oppurtunity to part with their money, and his greed (or business savvy, depends on who tells the story) drove him to abandon IBM and market Windows all by himself. A side product of his mutiny was Windows NT, which has been a true 32-bit Operating System, like OS/2 for quite some time, unlike Windows 95.

• OS/2 Warp 4 has the Warp Center, a taskbar onto which one can drag and plop whatever the heck one wants for instant shortcuts. There are also pull down menus reminiscent of those in Windows 95, but better. They are truly dynamic, that is, the menu is a picture of only what is on your desktop. So that if you move stuff around on your desktop and stick stuff in different folders, the menu's content is altered to reflect the changes you made to the desktop -- no empty or broken links!

• There's a nice little short cut right mouse button click trick, too. To open a folder from the Warp Center you don't need to scroll through the myriad menus and submenus until you get to what you're looking for. Just right click on the item you want and it is automatically opened.

• The Assistance Center: having trouble installing that printer? The Assistance Center can help. It offers things reminiscent of Wizards that'll walk you through the actual process of doing whatever it is you need help doing. If the helpstuff on your hard disk ain't enough, go online. You can connect to the IBM site and have an IBM tech look at your computer remotely.

• Requirements:
  • Minimum: 486DX/33 or higher with 12-16MB of RAM.
  • For speech navigation, i.e. moving the cursor around with voice commands: Pentium 75MHz or higher with 4MB of additional RAM above the Operating System.
  • For speech navigation and dictation: Pentium 100MHz or higher with 8-12MB of additional RAM above the Operating System.
  • 100-300MB of disk space with user-selectable options (200MB with IBM-preselected options).
    
• Voice Navigation requires a Pentium 75, but I'm thinking some 486/DX4 processors have performance comparable to a P75, so if you gotta good 486 Voice Navigation may be a reality. Provided you have the nifty noise-canceling microphone and a supported sound card.