Lending the lie to the Windows for Warehouses jibe, Microsoft Corp declares that 30% of the million copies a month of Windows it sells are the Windows for Workgroups version, and IBM Corp wants a piece of the action. According to US PC Week, IBM is preparing a peer-to-peer extension currently dubbed Peer OS/2. According to the paper, Peer OS/2 is currently in pre-beta testing and is due to go into general beta testing in the autumn.Peer OS/2 is being designed to enable users on different OS/2 machines to set up dynamic links and cut and paste data among MS-DOS, Windows and native OS/2 applications – and can execute these functions directly from machine to machine without requiring a file server, according to Art Olbert, director of Local Network Systems at IBM in Austin, Texas. The product will be based on Network DDE and Clipboard software licensed from Symbiotics Inc, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Peer OS/2 enables you to create OS/2-to-Windows DDE links across networks, which you can’t do with Windows for Workgroups, one source told the paper. The paper hears that the package will be an add-in to OS/2 2.1, but IBM that plans to incorporate the capabilities into a later release of the base operating system. IBM is also considering bundling network boards with the package, the paper suggests, but has not done any deals with manufacturers as yet.
