In a last gasp effort to salvage its OS/2 operating system, IBM yesterday announced that it had picked Micrographx Inc as its new operating system partner, supplanting Microsoft, and previewed a string of plans and features that it hopes will make 32-bit OS/2 more attractiver than Microsoft’s OS/2 3.0 or NT-32. The new version, IBM said, will run multiple MS-DOS applications concurrently, and will run Windows 3.0 applications under Presentation Manager. Downside is that it will need a minimum 80386SX processor. Micrografx will develop migration tools and performance enhancements for OS/2, including faster application execution in OS/2 2.0; the ability to run Windows applications as high-performance OS/2 2.0 Presentation Manager applications. IBM is also slashing OS/2 prices so that from tomorrow, OS/2 1.3 Standard Edition will be $150; OS/2 1.3 Extended Edition will be $690; and PC-DOS users can receive OS/2 1.3 standard for $100 and OS/2 1.3 Extended for $635.
