Attendees at the Comdex Spring show in Atlanta effectively sounded the death knell for Microsoft Corp’s unfancied OS/2 operating system, with only 13% of a poll of 6,403 respondees a very high number given that single issue polls in national newspapers are often based on as few as 500 responses – saying that the operating system would dominate the desk-top in 1995. The poll is conducted by Byte magazine at the spring and autumn Comdex shows, and the horizon was extedmed to 1995 this time from 1992, which has been the date since the poll was first taken in 1988 – when 32% were backing OS/2. Needless to say the runaway winner was MS-DOS with Windows in the wake of the Windows 3.0 launch: the combination took 30% of the vote, with straight MS-DOS getting 23% and MS-DOS with other extensions such as Desqview – getting another 3% for a total of 56% backing for some version of MS-DOS. Unix was steady at 21% – but we are talking about the desktop and about dominance, but belief in the Macintosh op erating system is declining – only 2% saw it dominat ing; 9% saw no one operat ing system being dominant.
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