Turns out Citrix Systems Inc isn’t the only player in the market for multi-user implementations of OS/2 (CI No 1,545) – a French company, Memsoft SA, has jumped up to say that it has been shipping a multi-user overlay for OS/2 since January 1988, and has just opened a US office in Boca Raton, Florida. According to Microbytes Daily, where Citrix has re-engineered OS/2 to make it multi-user – and is specifically based on the OS/2 1.2.1, Memsoft’s PolyMod2 is a separate overlay program for OS/2 so that it will work with any version, including the unannounced but already shipping 32-bit OS/2 2.0. Like the Citrix product, it is limited to character-based applications – no Presentation Manager, providing access to multiple OS/2 applications from ASCII terminals. It also supports networked personal computers, including Apple Computer Inc Macintoshes, and Windows 3 users can run OS/2 from a window. It can also interconnect multiple OS/2 machines without the need for a local area network, so that one or more machines in the complex can be dedicated to demanding application such as running a database – and the connection can also be remote, via a modem. It needs a copy of OS/2, and 2Mb on top of the OS/2 requirement, and a 10-user version sells for $1,600. Memsoft claims that it is installed on over 10,000 OS/2 systems in France, which it claims is 40% of the installed base of OS/2 there.
