Great Expectations

Having completed a master's degree in computer science, having used computers of all kinds for many years, having seen the likes of Next, and having used OS/2 for years, I had some great expectations of an operating system. I also knew what was accomplished at Xerox PARC so long ago, and you realize how far behind we are from where we should be. Unfortunately for me, IBM was no longer moving OS/2 forward, so eventually, other things began to catch up capability wise. Where there was once a modest amount of software for the system, the existing companies started to leave. I began to figure out what to do.

I started looking at Linux. I had dabbled in the past, but it had been quite a while. At the same time, I also started checking into Macs since I hadn't followed them much in a while either. Linux was hard, even for me. I kept at it, and I got more familiar with it, and newer distributions kept getting easier. However, it was clear it had a long way to go. It certainly had power, but I was getting to where I was no longer interested in the day-to-day stuff being a challenge, no matter how powerful or slick it was. The Mac was the opposite at the time: no power, but very easy. As much as I liked the Mac, it was still stuck with a Win 3.1 style kernel, and that wasn't going to work for me. I did get some old PowerBooks to play with. I fixed them up, and found they worked well as single application appliances. One just did Quicken - always ready in sleep mode - very good.

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