June 1999

The May meeting started off with the customary announcements of news of interest to OS/2 users, new products, updates, etc. New software and update releases will also be listed in POSEIDON messages.

Carl Ford was originally scheduled to give a brief presentation on the benefits of using many of the older MSDOS utilities under an OS/2 VDM. Unfortunately, Carl was recovering from a medical procedure on the night of our meeting, and wasn't able to attend. He's now rescheduled for June.

Larry Lavins made a brief Neat Feature presentation of WarpNote, a small sticky yellow notes program. The most recent release is v.1.82. WarpNote also includes a feature to keep track of birthdays, anniversaries, etc. Murray Weismer uses this feature in his startup folder.

Q&A Session

David Moskowitz, who usually conducts the Q&A, wasn't able to be with us again at the May meeting. In his absence, Dave Gentzler presided over the May Q&A session. Some of the principal questions follow:

- end of Q&A -

Intermission followed, with refreshments, 50/50 raffle and a raffle of several software products.

May Feature Presentation

The principal feature at the May meeting was a presentation by SIG member Joe Penrose of Lotus Notes, which is widely used throughout the worldwide business environment.

Notes was presented from an end user's prespective, covering Release 4.6, most commonly in use today, and the new, well-publicized R5, which is not yet available for the OS/2 platform.

Joe covered some possible types of corporate databases, remote use with replication, Lotus's built-in e-mail and scheduling features, and browsing the internet within Notes. The major differences between Release 4.6 and R5, including a new Welcome page, were also discussed.

Many questions arose during Joe's presentation, which elicited group discussions. Joe did a very fine job throughout.

There are many other Lotus Notes features, not covered at the May meeting. We'll try to schedule another Lotus Notes session within the next few months to cover some of these other areas.

It's interesting to note that some European web sites have reported seeing browser entries identified as Lotus Notes R5 (for OS/2). It seems likely that IBM/Lotus may have been developing an OS/2 version of Lotus Notes R5 at the insistence of large European corporate customers.

Meeting was adjourned, the room cleaned up and lights turned off around 10:30pm.

It appears that hobbes will remain at NMSU, and will not be taken over by some other organization, at least for the time being. The following message was posted on the c.o.o.announce newsgoup by rocks@nmsu.edu on May 28th (sorry, he didn't provide his real name).

Message from Helmar, Project Magic coordinator for Opera Software AS:

In it's heyday, there were more than 600 enthusiastic members of the J Street Mailer Charter User Group who each paid $30 for the privilege of being beta testers. InnoVal also provided an email listserver for this group for purposes of discussion, Q&A, bug reports, and direct contact with InnoVal personnel. Traffic levels were always very high.

Ultimately, financial considerations forced InnoVal to close down the J Street Mailer project at the end of 1998, at a point in the product development very close to completion. While it is, in it's present form, a very fine mailer, it isn't quite up to the level of a finished competitive commercial product, in the opinion of most users.

Traffic levels on the email list gradually tapered off after the start of 1999 by Charter User members, even though many still use the program. But without active participation by InnoVal, there didn't seem much point to it. Most recently, this service has been terminated altogether.

It appears that InnoVal has spent the past few months looking for some entity to take over the product on some mutually acceptable negotiated basis to finish the remaining development. As of this time, it's unknown what progress, if any,

It would indeed be tragic for this Java program not to be resurrected and completed. There seems to be so very little left to be done.

We have been informed that the Warpstock board of directors is working to establish a timeline for dissemination of information for Warpstock 2000. At this time, we have no insight into the specific requirements which they might establish. So our best course of action at present is to just wait a while longer. Hopefully, we'll hear something soon from the Warpstock board.

Details for Warpstock '99 also have been at a virtual standstill for the past couple of months, giving rise to lots of unrest from the worldwide OS/2 user community.

In a recent newsgroup posting, Brad Wardell stated, "Oh, and there may be a new version of OS/2 itself this year from Stardock along with numerous Stardock created or integrated technologies which I won't go into until we have a firm agreement with IBM."

It's quite likely that any such "Stardock created or integrated technologies" may really be Object Desktop features. For this reason, many OS/2 users may not be too eager to embrace a Warp 5 client development by Stardock.

Of course, the real questions here are (1) whether IBM would seriously entertain any notions of allowing Stardock to develop an OS/2 Warp 5 client as envisioned by Wardell, and (2) whether this whole matter is just hype created with the hope that enough momentum might be created to persuade IBM to turn the development over to Stardock.

At the end of April, Sean Reilly released a new gold version of Moneydance v.2.0 financial program, written in 100% pure Java, as reported in last month's article. Shortly thereafter, during May, this was followed by v.2.0.1 and 2.0.2, which were released as shareware, but they are still free downloads.

Moneydance v.2.0.2 has a completely different installation than v.2.0. I used the .CMD launch script for OS/2 provided by Sean, but made a few changes for my own paths. No problem whatsoever. Moneydance v.2.0.2 ran perfectly.

Moneydance has many great features. Unfortunately, on-line banking is still lacking, but it's in develpment, along with stock portfolio & investment management, on-line portfolio updates and check printing. At such time as these features are incorporated, hopefully in the near future, Moneydance will become a serious competitor to Quicken.

At this time, I have no information on the differences, if any, between the shareware and registered versions. More later.

See http://seanreilly.com/java/moneydance for the complete list of features, additional information and downloads.

IBM is expected to release an updated version of Communicator/2 during the next few weeks according to IBM inside sources. Warp City reports that hits have been received from IBM employees using Communicator v.4.51. There are still a few lingering bugs to be taken care of prior to release. The new GA version should be out before July 1st.

Wednesday, June 23rd at 7:00pm is the date and time of the June meeting at our meeting site: The Episcopal Academy, 376 N. Latches Lane, Merion, PA. Mark your calendars and plan to attend. And bring an interested friend or associate along to hear all the good news about OS/2 and Java. A system will be on hand for live demos of OS/2 Warp 4, a variety of OS/2 applications, Java, Internet, etc. if time permits.

For the benefit of anyone who may not yet have the most recent releases of FixPak-10, Java 117A update, FI v.1.2.3, Star Office, or other recent large files, copies can be made to your ZIP disk (or portable SyQuest drive) on a first come/first serve basis, as time may permit. Please call me prior to the meeting date to make sure that I will have the requested files on my hard drive, ready for copying.

Members without cars can take SEPTA's R-5 (Paoli Local) to Overbrook, or the R-6 to Bala. Call me to make arrangements to be picked up at the RR Station. Since Episcopal Academy is so close to public transportation, why don't you Philadelphia Center City folks who don't have cars call ahead of time to be picked up at the train station.

Everybody should keep up to date by logging in to our OS/2 SIG web site at frequent intervals: www.pasug.org/

Please be on time. The meeting will start *promptly* at 7:00pm, as per the following agenda and schedule.

Planned June Agenda:

1. General announcements, news of interest, new OS/2 products, future plans, SIG business, etc. (7:00 - 7:20pm)

2. Brief neat feature member presentation (7:20 - 7:30): "DOS Applications" by Carl Ford

3. Q&A Session (7:30 - 8:30pm): If you have questions, this is the place to bring them up. Someone is sure to have the answers. Or if you have something of interest to contribute, please don't hesitate to share it with the others.

4. Intermission and Raffles (8:30 - 8:50pm) In addition to our regular 50/50 raffle, there may also be software products for raffle, if available.

5. Feature Presentation (8:50 - 10:00pm) The main feature scheduled for the June meeting will be a presentation by SIG member Jim Nuytens of PM123, a native OS/2 multimedia program designed to play the increasingly popular MP3 audio files found around the web and in various newsgroups. PM123 also won "Runner-up" in the 1998 OS/2 E-Zine! Reader's Choice awards for multimedia programs.

   Jim will demonstrate some of the neat features of PM123, including WinAmp "skins" support, the built-in graphic equalizer/pre-amp, and how to create play lists in PM123 so that you can more easily setup an entire evening's worth of listening.

   He also plans to show some of the more than 60 WinAmp "skins" that he has converted using PM123's built-in skin converter and report on some of the pitfalls he found while doing so.

Looking forward to a great June meeting. Please make an effort to attend, and bring a friend or associate to see what OS/2 can do.