Warp Expo West: Or, What I Did in Orange County Last Month
Last month, September 18th, to be exact, SCOUG (Southern California OS/2 Users Group) hosted a fantastic one day, FREE, OS/2 conference at Chapman University in Orange, California. Billed as Warp Expo West, this was the group's third annual such event and, by all reports, the best one yet. It was my first WEW, though, so all I can say is that this year's was very well done. There were many interesting presentations in four concurrent tracks over the course of the day. Vendor exhibits were available as well, so the 240 or so attendees had more to choose from than time allowed. Sessions ranged from "Multimedia Madness and OS/2" to "Web Site Development: Best Practices." Two highlights were the media roundtable and IBM's presentation on their services to support and enhance clients' Network Computing environments.
The Media Roundtable featured Alan Zeichick (former editor of OS/2 Magazine), Esther Schindler (longtime OS/2 enthusiast and freelance writer now writing for Sm@rt Reseller), and Peter Coffee (technology evaluator and writer for PC Week). Although the discussion was euphemistically titled "IBM: The New Strategy to Control the Worlwide Desktop," all three made it clear that they hadn't picked that title, thought it was "all well and good," but felt sure there was no such strategy- at least none that would soon see the light of day.
What of a Warp 5 Client?
The trio made Much ado of the outcome, if it was an outcome (see below), from a meeting Stardock was to have had with IBM the Thursday before Warp Expo West. Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock, sent out a message Friday, the day before WEW, saying that IBM had turned down Stardock's offer to OEM OS/2 from IBM so it could, as some might put it, be resuscitated. All three media reps essentially repeated Wardell's message, with nothing to the contrary. Right after that session, however, Steven King of IBM publicly stated that the meeting (apparently an IBM-only meeting) had not actually taken place because hurricane Floyd had disrupted air travel. Perhaps by the time you're reading this article the mist will have cleared up some, but things look pretty murky as I write this.
King went on to describe how his team was currently earning IBM roughly $100 million for the calendar year from consulting, custom programming and other IT services to help clients use and expand OS/2-based systems, as well as "workspace on demand" networks and other e-business solutions. He pointed out that some of these services included custom installation scripts that could be used with an OS/2 Warp Server for e-business CD-ROM to install instead of a customized desktop client.
He described how such a custom installation script could make available just the "client" part of OS/2 Warp Server for e-Business minus the clearly "server" parts while retaining, for instance, the JFS (Journaling File System), the LVM (Logical Volume Manager), and the SMP support. He qualified those statements by saying that this work was not related to producing a new Warp 5 desktop client. Though it may not be related in that this work was not done to produce a new Warp 5 desktop client, it certainly makes it all but probable.
Steven did say that the main issue preventing IBM from producing a new "client" was an IBM policy that the client must be made available in as many as 32 languages. Apparently, even though more than 85% of the revenue earned from OS/2 sales comes from only five language versions, IBM policy requires it to produce language versions for either 28 or 32 of the world's languages. The costs to produce language versions beyond the "big five" are hugely disproportionate to the percentage of revenue generated by that last 15% of sales. How to get around that corporate policy is the big question, it seems.
Other Sessions...
There were many other excellent sessions at this year's Warp Expo West, including sessions on Java programming;, using Rexx and C together; that new Internet darling, XML; Home Automation (X/10 and X/290 technology); Scientific Computing (using a Matlab-like program ported from Unix); getting started with Netscape Composer (the visual Web page editor in Netscape Communicator); and even Web Server performance.
Did I forget to mention the prizes? IBM gave away several copies of OS/2 Warp Server for e-business, copies of OS/2 Warp 4, and a Lotus SmartSuite. A raft of other prizes were given away as well, including Ditto tape drives with BackMaster for OS/2, and a full Home Automation kit from Armin Schwartz, the developer of Home/2. An SPCUG'er, Twan Sun, the only other Sacramentan I spotted at WEW, won a copy of Smack, a label-making program for OS/2.
My only complaint was that Warp Expo West wasn't a two day conference. Congratulations to SCOUG for a job well done! You can be sure I'll be there next year.
More OS/2 Conferences
There are a couple of major OS/2 conferences this month. Warpstock Europe 1999, a four day event in Germany, will probably be over by the time you read this. Given the news that surrounded Warp Expo West on the future (or not!) of a Warp 5 client, it'll be interesting to see what IBM says there. Next, the third annual Warpstock event happens on October 16th and 17th in Atlanta.
NEWS FLASH!!! Netscape Communicator 4.61 for OS/2!
If you haven't heard yet, IBM has made available yet another version of Netscape Communicator for OS/2, version 4.61. Both the weak and strong encryption versions (the latter being 128-bit encryption) can be downloaded here. Be ready to wait a while, though, as the download is right at 10 Megs in size, compressed. The new corresponding Plug-in Pak, version 3.0, is available at the same site. It may be worth your while to order both Communicator and the Plug-in Pak on CD-ROM if all you have is a 56Kbps modem to download with. I'll make sure the information about where you might purchase such a CD-ROM is included in the eBlue version of this article.
There was a fairly extensive beta program for Comm/2, conducted over the last three or four months, that shook out quite a few of the bugs. Apparently, however, a few less serious bugs got through anyway. A copy of the Comm/2 "bug list", showing what was fixed and where the source of the problem was, can be perused on Peter Norloff's OS/2 BBS Web site. That list shows, interestingly enough, that many of the bugs were found to exist in the original Windows-based code. Most reports indicate that this new version performs better and is much more stable than Netscape Communicator for OS/2 Warp version 4.04 ever was. I've only been using it for a few days on my system at work, but what I've seen so far looks excellent.
Installation of this new Comm/2 version on my system at work was quick and easy. The install process picked up my profiles and settings from the 4.04 version that I'd been using without my even having to tell it anything. Why was I still running 4.04? I don't run beta code on my system at work, if I can help it, while my system at home gets beta-abused all the time. No wonder my wife decided enough was enough and she got her own system!
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One warning though, the installation program asks if you want your Web Explorer Quicklist converted over to Navigator's Bookmarks. The only time you should answer that with Yes is when you have no prior version of Navigator or Communicator on your system. If you have a prior version of Netscape installed, that version's bookmarks will be picked up by the install process for version 4.61.
SmartSuite Updated, Again
Are you using Lotus SmartSuite for OS/2 Warp 4? Did you know that Lotus has produced a version 1.1 (in December 1998) and just recently a set of patches to most of the SmartSuite components, bringing the product up to version 1.1.1? Well, the version 1.1 upgrade is priced very competitively. The 1.1.1 patches (that will only correctly fit over version 1.1) are free for the downloading.
Filestar.Com
Unimaint and Filestar/2 have been acquired by Sierra Hyperstar Software. They've already issued a CSD for Unimaint and plan to produce enhanced and upgraded versions of both of these fine products. Check 'em out.
Star Office 5.1
You may have heard that Star Division, makers of Star Office, has been acquired by Sun Microsystems. This gives the Star Office product a solid backing even though it will be free for the downloading. I believe that Star Office will be the vehicle that Sun can use to show how well Java can work as the basis for all office applications with better integration into an object oriented enterprise infrastructure. It will work equally well for SOHO (Small Office-Home Office) and personal use where "enterprise objects" have less value. Them's my thoughts anyway.
Java
IBM has released the Java Developement Kit, level 1.1.8 and some updates to that JDK. You can find the 1.1.8 JRE (Java Run-time Environment) package and the Toolkit package here. Both of these packages are hefty downloads with the JRE weighing in at 11 Megabytes (without Unicode support) and the Toolkit at 15 Megabytes. When expanded they take up 47 Megabytes and 65 Megabytes respectively! Unless you're planning on doing Java development you might want to just download and install the JRE package. Unless you have access to a real high-speed Internet connection you might want to look for a CD-ROM containing these packages and save yourself a heap of time.
WarpUP!
One such CD-ROM product is the new WarpUP! product from Indelible Blue. I highly recommend this handy tool. When you install WarpUP!, it puts an icon on your desktop and copies some necessary files to your hard drive. WarpUP! requires that you run with the CD-ROM inserted in your CD reader. When you run the desktop resident icon, WarpUP! scans your entire system to determine what levels and versions of software you have installed. Then it matches those results against the contents of the CD-ROM to determine what, if any, maintenance could be applied from the WarpUP! CD. After the scan is complete, WarpUP! presents the user a Web page "catalog" of available maintenance. Selecting one of the items from that list brings up another Web page for the underlying product. You can choose to read the fix's documentation or just to install the fix. The WarpUP! CD contains relevant FixPaks from IBM, updates to Warp components, such as the TCP/IP stack and modified install diskettes, and several freeware nice-to-haves, such as the Info-ZIP project's ZIP and UNZIP tools. It also has the EMX runtime environment which allows your Warp system to run a huge number of programs ported from Unix.
After I upgraded from SmartSuite 1.0 to SmartSuite 1.1, the next time I ran WarpUP! it said there was maintenance that should be applied to version1.1! (No maintenance had been indicated for SmartSuite 1.0.) Specifically, there was an Organizer DLL that needed maintenance to make it Y2K compatible. WarpUP! doesn't contain priced upgrades, just freely available maintenance.
I've just scratched the surface of the WarpUP! CD's features with this description. Maybe I can talk our Sacra Blue editor into running another article focused on the WarpUP! product. Send me e-mail through the SPCUG Web page if you'd be interested in reading such an article.
And More Java...
Speaking again of Java, if you're interested in developing Java applications or making use of XML, I recommend you take a look at IBM's alphaWorks site. There you can find tutorials on Java and XML, JavaBean examples, XML tools such as editors, generators and displayers, and a whole lot more, usually free for the taking. This is excellent quality stuff, not projects they've dropped by the wayside. Most of these tools are written in 100% pure Java and so will run without a hitch on OS/2 Warp.
Hardware News
In August, IBM quietly released several more USB support modules including support for USB speakers, floppy disks and modems, adding to those available for USB mice and keyboards. With FixPak 11 for OS/2 Warp 4, IBM took a new direction (with a small step to the left and then back). The decision was made to split out the device drivers from the full FixPaks to reduce the size of the regular FixPaks. The first Device Driver FixPak was issued in August. The small step to the left (and back) was because in the first release of FixPak 11, the CLOCK01.SYS device driver update had been left out (it was and still is included with the first Device Driver FixPak). The problem was that without that driver, FixPak 11 was not Y2K compliant. After this fumble was discovered, FixPak 11 was hurriedly reissued and now includes the Y2K compliant clock driver. So, if you downloaded FixPak 11 and the README file does NOT say "release 2," you should get the clock fix file, Y2KCLOCK.EXE (select "All Fix Packages-by Product" and then "OS/2 Warp V400"). Or, you can download the whole FixPak 11 again but that certainly isn't necessary. After you've installed FixPak 11, just unzip the clock fix file and follow the instructions in the README file. If you didn't install FixPak 10, I recommend getting the new Device Driver FixPak and installing that, regardless of what FixPak you've applied to Warp 4.
Want to do some high-speed backups? Check out the CDS (Computer Data Strategies) Web site for its package deal offering Back Again/2 Pro bundled with a Tecmar Travan NS20 tape drive. This SCSI tape drive handles TR-5 tapes that will hold 10 Gigabytes of uncompressed data and 20 Gigabytes of compressed data (assuming 2-to-1 compression). This drive can move data at up to two Megabytes per second! While it is definitely on the pricey side, running at about $420 for the drive alone, if you're looking for high speed and the flexibility to store a copy of your data in a secure location, large capacity tape is still the way to go. Then again, with the price of hard drive space continuing to plummet, it may be cheaper to install a 25 Gig EIDE hard drive just for backup space.
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