The difference between OS/2 2.0 and Windows 32 are purely cosmetic and political, says one developer: both will be capable of pre-emptive multi-tasking and local area network-capable, so the only difference is the name on the outside of the box? Not surprisingly, Ballmer denies that the differences are cosmetic or political; Microsoft’s strategy for Windows is said to be scalable, spanning the range from standard mode for 80286 systems to NT mode for RISC workstations and servers; also, Windows will have pen, multi-media, distributed and object-oriented extensions; OS/2 may have these capabilities eventually, but Ballmer says that he sees them coming through operating systems and environments like Go Corp, the Open Software Foundation’s Distributed Computing Environment and Pink Patriot, none of which he regards as OS/2-based.
