The following letter has been sent to the the NY Times in response to the Stephen Manes' Personal Computers column in the paper's Oct. 25 edition. Letters Editor The New York Times 229 West 43rd Street New York, NY 10036-3959 Dear Sir: I have read Stephen Manes' Personal Computers column in your October 25 issue several times, and every time I wonder why it didn't run on the op ed page. It doesn't appear to be an objective evaluation of a new product. Manes obscures any valid observations he may have with the acerbity of his writing. IBM worked with Mr. Manes throughout the review, and I assure you, the product never had a chance. He begins with a description of IBM's "self delusion in sticking with technically superior products long after the wider world has found them wanting." The six million users of OS/2, many of them large corporations all over the world who are using the product for their most important computing applications, have not found it wanting. In fact, the London Press Association is using OS/2 Warp to build its "News Room 2000" -- because of OS/2's ease of use, its multimedia features, and because in its first full year of intense use there, OS/2 has never failed. Manes calls these OS/2 users "a fanatical band of adherents with too much time on their hands." Next, he says that Warp "does little to improve IBM's reputation for writing wretched personal computer software." In fact, conventional wisdom holds that IBM writes superior PC software that has not been marketed well. OS/2 won over 43 industry awards last year, including several "readers' choice" awards. IBM's Personal Dictation System is widely acclaimed as an innovative, beautifully executed speech recognition product, and was recently awarded Discover Magazine's 1994 award for innovative computer software. IBM's LAN Server 4.0 network operating system shipped last month to rave reviews. Then Manes proceeds to his evaluation of the product. He notes that 15 minutes after he "selected the wrong video software," Warp's Resource Manager told him that he didn't have the appropriate adapter on his machine for the software he selected. Most users consider this conflict detection a feature of the product. His second issue with the product was indeed a problem with the software. Last week, IBM briefly -- and very publicly -- stopped production lines to correct the problem before Warp was widely available in the retail channel. We are absolutely committed to ensuring our customers get the highest quality product we can deliver. As for Mr. Manes' further problems: - Warp's Internet software didn't work because IBM's service network wasn't up and running yet, which we advised him of before he installed the software he received in advance of broad availability. - The standard benchmark he used to test Warp's performance was designed to test 16-bit Windows apps. The benchmark provider has publicly stated that it is not an appropriate benchmark for testing OS/2's performance (OS/2 is a 32-bit operating system). We advised Manes of this while he was doing his testing. - The drivers he complains are not supplied with the product are indeed for the newest products. So new, in fact, that we had gone to final testing before they were available. Manes was assured in advance of his writing that these drivers will be available for Warp by the end of the year. - And finally, Warp's "own interface" is widely considered a strength of the product. While it requires users to work differently than they do in Windows, we find that most of them want to -- that's why they use OS/2. IBM is proud of this product, of its evolution to the stable, high performance, easy to use platform it is today. We feel that Mr. Manes did not give the product a fair evaluation and regret that the New York Times ran what reads like an editorial on IBM's fitness as a provider of personal computing software as an objective evaluation of a product. Sincerely, Leland R. Reiswig General Manager IBM Personal Software Products