In development is a software product which users can run off-the-shelf 32-bit Windows applications, within an existing OS/2 operating system, at the same time, on a single PC. This will be great news for banks and other financial institutions that rely on OS/2 as a mission-critical operating system, which is far less affected by viruses and not prone to "crashes", unlike another, more "well-known" windowing operating system.

To be called Virtual PC for OS/2, this product will be marketed with the InnoTek name, a software developer in Stuttgart, Germany and will feature their OS/2 expertise combined with the Connectix Corporation's Virtual PC for Windows technology.

Virtual PC for Windows enables Windows users to run multiple PC operating systems at the same time, on a single machine, as either individual windows or background tasks. This is done without having to repartition the hard drive or having to reboot from one operating system to another.

Virtual PC for OS/2 is scheduled to ship in the first quarter of 2002, but Virtual PC for Windows is currently available. (And yes, Connectix is the same company that brought out the revolutionary QuickCam over five years ago!)

I traveled to IBM's Germany headquarters, located in Herrenberg, (about an hour south of Stuttgart), around that same time (1996) to install the client portion of a major content management system, so I really like OS/2. I have worked with it extensively and can say that it has a very rich and powerful set of features, and it had them years before these same features were integrated into Microsoft products.

Copyright © 2006 Rick Smith All rights reserved.