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An editorial by the editors of the VOICE Newsletter
I finally received my three copies of eComStation (well actually only two sets
of CDs). I had been away for a week at the beginning of August, and found my package
from Prism Dataworks waiting for me when I got home. 3 CD's in a set. The first
being the eComStation Installation CD, the second is the IBM MCP CD and the third
is a compilation of third party applications. Paper documentation amounted to only
2 double sided photocopy quality sheets. Those who purchase their copy through Mensys
get a 68 page installation guide. Those of us who didn't, can download it in PDF
format at http://www.ecomstation.nl/files/ecs-ga-pdf-a5.pdf.
My first install was on my Toshiba Laptop. The first attempt resulted in problems
after I tried to install a sound driver for the Crystal chipset. The first phase
of the install went great prior to that, but multimedia, PCMCIA and Networking still
rely on the IBM Selective Install which seems to clobber some things if one is not
careful with it.
I did get eCS 1.0 installed, and everything including sound,PCMCIA and my wireless
IBM network card running. The base install adds a distinctly updated look to OS/2
with eStyler lite modifying the titlebar and buttons and eDialogEnhancer modifying
message windows. I've never been big on eyecandy but I'm very impressed with what
Serenity Systems and their team of volunteers has done. With just a bit of tweaking
I had what I think is a very attractive desktop.
The above is using an alternative desktop bitmap included with eCS: WP_CUPOLAD_LARGE.BMP
as a background. I also have XWorkPlace installed (hence the multiple desktops from
PageMage in the lower left corner). It's still OS/2, but what a beauty! For those
who hate the fancy stuff, you can turn it all off easily enough. You also have the
option to install the IBM MCP (Merlin Convenience Pak) without any of the eCS additions.
I won't be going into detail about what is included in eComStation 1.0 and how
well it works. I'll leave that for others in a future issue. Also this was covered
extensively two months ago by Don Eitner (
eComStation 1.0, the Release Candidate ) and Isaac Leung ( eComStation
v1.00: First Looks ) in their reviews of the eComStation 1.0 Release Candidate;
and I just wanted to take the opportunity to share my joy with others who can appreciate
it. :-)
I will point out that some folks have run into some problems. From browsing the
hundreds of messages on the eComStation.support.install news group on the Mensys
news server ( news://news.ecomstation.nl)
these problems seem to center around the Networking, Multimedia and PCMCIA install
phase which caused me some grief and of course LVM which will take some getting
used to also. Hopefully these items will be incorporated into Serenity's new eCS
installer in eCS 1.01 along with a better user interface for LVM. Don Eitner covers
his install experience with eCS 1.0 in this month's View
from the End(User): eComStation Gold Release.
For the record my next install went much smoother on my all SCSI, dual Pentium
Pro workstation. Perhaps it was the different hardware, or maybe the experience
obtained in the first go round, but for me the experience was well worth it. Things
which had given me problems on my eCS Preview partition, like XWorkPlace's PageMage,
Home Page Publisher and Norman Anti-Virus were now working fine.
Anyway it is certainly great to see OS/2 being supported, expanded and even promoted.
Now if we can only get a significant number of windoze users to convert, maybe my
ISP won't keep having to shut down their cable modem system so often to clear out
all those stupid Code Red and SirCam virus attacks.
Warpstock events: VOICE has decided to have a presence
at both Warpstock events this year. We will have a booth at both Warpstock 2001
in Toronto on October 6-8, Canada and Warpstock Europe at 'KH Limburg' College in
Diepenbeek, Belgium on November 2-4. We will need help covering the booths at both
locations, so if you are going to either event, please volunteer to help. Volunteers
would sit at the booths for about a 2 hour shift, greeting interested people and
handing out a brochure with a membership form to anyone interested in joining VOICE.
This is a critical investment for VOICE and the OS/2-eCS community. VOICE has supported
Warpstock for years now, and we have been rewarded with at least enough new members
to cover most of our expenses. So please help.
It is also imperative that if you have any desire to attend either Warpstock
event, you register now. This will show your own personal support for these events.
Like VOICE, these are non-profit and put on by volunteers.These people need to know
that their efforts are appreciated.
Warpstock Europe almost didn't happen this year, and Warpstock 2002 is looking
questionable at this point, since no bids have been submitted yet. Please show you
care by attending these shows and meeting with other OS/2 users. The experience
is incredible. For those of you who still can't justify the travel because of distance,
then consider having next years Warpstock in your area. For information on submitting
bids, see the website for each event - Warpstock - http://www.warpstock.org/news/press/052501a.html
and for Warpstock Europe contact the organizers of the previous events: http://warpstock.os2.org/en/impressum.
VOICE Newsletter Update: We are making more progress
with our attempt to automate a lot of the newsletter assembly process using Dennis
Bareis's PPWizard pre-processor software. Though the transition has had a few kinks
in it, it has already helped in making the translation of the header/footer of each
page easier and more reliable. For more on PPWizard see Dennis's web site at http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~dbareis/ppwizard.htm
.
We are also planning on adding a new page to the VOICE Newsletter to allow small
Freeware and OS/2 User advertisements. This would allow developers of freeware apps
to advertise their products by having a free banner ad on this page. Also OS/2-eCS
users and OS/2 user groups could place text ads seeking other OS/2-eCS users in
their geographical area to start/promote a user group or maybe just find someone
to help them with a support problem or have coffee with. If anyone is interested
in this concept please send me an email at ads@os2voice.org.
If anyone would like to help with editing this page for the newsletter, please contact
me at editor@os2voice.org.
As much as we try, a handful of people just can't do everything. We need everyone's
help. We are also revising our sponsorship levels to make it more affordable to
sponsor VOICE, and have banner ads on some pages of the Newsletter for shareware
and commercial OS/2 developers. You can view the status of that on our Sponsorship
page - http://www.os2voice.org/sponsorinfo.html.
We are always interested in your thoughts and views on subjects related to OS/2,
and would like to see opinion/editorial pieces as well as hardware/software reviews
and HowTo articles. If you can help by writing an article please contact me at editor@os2voice.org.
The Guidelines for Article Submissions to the VOICE Newsletter
page has been updated with the addition of some ideas for articles. Please take
a look and see if you can help us with an article for an upcoming issue. Some folks
find they enjoy telling about their OS/2 experiences. :-)
The Warp Doctor site: Have an idea for Warp Doctor? You can send your comments directly to the Warp Doctor web guy Jeremy at rs@fyrelizard.com or better yet attend one of our Warp Doctor Team meetings, weekly on IRC.
Please note that beginning on September 2, the team now meets every Sunday at
2PM EDT (18:00 GMT), on IRC in the #warpdoctor channel on the WEBBnet IRC network.
For more information on attending online Warp Doctor IRC meetings please see the
VOICE Meeting Information page - http://www.os2voice.org/meetinginfo.html.
VOICE Online Update: In August we had a Speakup with
Sundial Systems on August 6th. It was a general question session. You can read the
log at http://www.os2voice.org/logs/V080601.LOG.html.
There was also a general membership meeting on August 20th. You can review the transcripts
of these and other VOICE IRC events at http://www.os2voice.org/transcripts.html
This month we have general member meetings on September 3 and 17 at 8PM EST (00:00GMT,
02:00 Berlin). Everyone interested in OS/2 or eComstation is invited to attend either
or both of these sessions. For more information on attending online VOICE IRC meetings
please see the VOICE Meeting Information page - http://www.os2voice.org/meetinginfo.html.
If you have an idea for a Speakup event, please submit it to liaison@os2voice.org,
and we will try to schedule something. As always, please be sure to check out the
updated VOICE Future events Calendar in this newsletter
or on the VOICE website at http://www.os2voice.org/calendar.html
for more details on future VOICE events.
This month we start with a review by Thorsten Thielen, of POVRay.
He tells us how to use this raytracing application to create computer-generated
images.
Next up, we have Luc Van Bogaert's article on what we can expect to see at this
years Warpstock Europe 2001 in Belgium. Then Michal
Necasek is back in the classroom again this month, with An
OS/2 History Lesson - The Early Years. This time he covers OS/2 1.1 and
1.2 . Look for him to detail the beginning roots of OS/2 next month. Some folks
have asked why he is not going in chronological order. That's easy, he didn't have
all the versions of OS/2 when he started writing these articles, so he started with
what he had and continued as he acquired the rest.
Peter Brown discovered a neat solution to an ongoing problem he has with sharing
his computer with others in his family and he liked it so much he just had to tell
everyone about it. :-) Here are two articles on that product - MultiDesk
V0.2.0 - Your own Desktop on a shared OS/2 Warp PC! and MultiDesk
V0.2.0 - Dealing with Sound Schemes under MultiDesk V0.2.0.
A lot of people are trying Odin these days. Many run into problems with trying
to install win32 apps under Odin. Herwig Bauernfeind has done a lot of work on installing
many of these Window's applications. He begins a series of articles on how to handle
the Manual installation of Win32 programs under Odin.
Finally, Don Eitner returns in View from the End(User):
eComStation Gold Release with a look at his installation of the newly arrived
eComStation 1.0.
Finally we have the VOICE Newsletter OS/2 Tips page
and the Letters, Addenda, Errata page. If you have
any OS/2 or eCS tips you've uncovered, please send them to tips@os2voice.org.
If you have any comments or suggestions about the newsletter or articles in it,
please send them to editor@os2voice.org
That's it for this month. So far, for October, we have Michal Necazek's continuing
series on the history of OS/2; and as well as more on manually installing win32
applications for use under Odin by Herwig Bauernfeind. Also for October we have
an "Introduction to Perl" by Heiko Korsawe and a new series of articles
by Eric Baerwaldt harddisk partitioning, error handling and SCSI drive. Hopefully
we will have a followup article on Limewire from Frank Berke. A couple of articles
also in the works is an in-depth review of Xact 7.x by Stefan Deutscher, and a review
of the Artem Wireless LAN cards, by Karlheinz Schmidthaus. A date for publishing
hasn't been determined yet for either article.
Mark Dodel and Christian Hennecke
Editors, VOICE Newsletter
editor@os2voice.org