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-- b i o --
Borne Mace is a Java Evangelist, Computer Security Geek, and Student of Life and the Universe. (Perhaps one day able to understand it well enough to be a teacher/mentor).

BeOS Release 3 for Intel
reviewed by Borne Mace

I was overjoyed when I got the chance to do a review of the much touted BeOS, but so far things have not turned out quite as well as I would have wished. Once I received the nicely packaged BeOS Release 3 for Intel I quickly opened it up and read the installation instructions. It all seemed fairly straight forward. Insert the 3 1/2 floppy, put the CD in the Atapi compliant CD-ROM drive, start up the computer.

Well it read the floppy and started up the BeOS initialization, but when it came to the point of selecting my installation media there were no choices to choose from. It seems being Atapi compliant is just not good enough.

I received an e-mail from BeOS tech support after submitting a query as to the cause of my difficulties. They stated that there is a rather specific configuration that the hardware has to be in for it to work and that even if I had gotten it installed it wouldn't have worked anyway, since my video card isn't supported right now.

Perhaps someday BeOS for Intel will be something that is useful, but for now, if you can get BeOS running on your Intel machine you are one of a very small minority.

Editor's Note:
I also tried to install BeOS on my Pentium 133 system (which also met the requirements as stated in the installation guide) and encountered the same problem as Borne. However, I have heard from a couple of Mac users who have had no problems whatsoever with the PowerPC version of BeOS other than a lack of software. Here's hoping Release 4 will resolve these compatibility problems and perhaps give users an alternative to Windows that is slightly less intimidating than Linux. If that happens, I'll be one of the first to buy a Be polo shirt and spread the word of Be to the masses; well, at least those whose e-mail addresses have found their way into my Pilot.

The writer of this article welcomes your comments:  bmace@mindjack.com