No really!  It’s an article from PC Magazine, 29th of May, 1990. And it’s authored by Ray Duncan, before the infamous split.

NOTE FROM THE FUTURE It’s now possible to look at the version that Microsoft published after this version “An actual look at Microsoft OS/2 2.0“!

Of course, the thing that stands out from the screen shot is that OS/2 2.0 looks more like OS/2 1.2.  And there is it’s ability to run two MS-DOS VDM’s in a window at the same time!

Although this was a feat that Windows/386 was capable of doing, going far back as far as 1987.

But as you can see, OS/2 did it better.  Windows/386 was unable to run EGA graphics in a window, instead I was forced to run Flight simulator 3 in CGA mode.  While the OS/2 2.0 beta could give over 620kb to a MS-DOS session, Windows/386 could only give me 550kb.

And when it came time to ship, well here is IBM OS/2 2.00 0xr6100 running Flight simulator 3.0 in a window and showing a MS-DOS box with about 600kb free.

The real shame is that MS OS/2 2.0 was looking really promising in 1990, but thanks to the split the world didn’t get to try it out until 1992.

The article is a good read to get an idea of the state of development back in 1990.  And of course all of PC Magazine’s 1990’s magazines are up on google books.  I’ve managed to find 2/3rd of the Beta since I started looking (from 1990… been looking a long long time), and I have reviewed the SDK/toolkit earlier, and here.