he does not appear to be a pc geek (windows 3.3?); but, unfortunately, i can attest somewhat to his claims. when my computer company was in business 1985 -2000, i built many computers with os/2 preloaded. unfortunately, too many people expected miracles from a system good for windows 3.x but way, way, way under powered for os/2. it also did take effort to configure dos sessions particularly for many of the people who got into computers for the money but who had no love or talent for computers. the industry is still full of assholes like this.
in 1995, i had a submarine game that took me a year to get runnning. i finallly realized that the memory region of the vga was not excluded by default. once i figured this out i was able to get every dos game i had to work (even myst). remember how the hp scanner card drivers would not load. well, ibm pc dos7 comes with a neat utility that will demand load a driver from the console (it won't load them high). in fact you can upgrade the dos in os/2. well, even loaded low there was enough dos memory to run the hp card and a win3.x session for ocr use! finally a lot of dos programs caused 100% cpu usage. it is a bit of a trick to get the priority settings right particularly with a client server based app. (i'm supporting two such apps even today). i think you can see the recipe for disaster.
after a while, i got feed up with the cheap lamers that wanted the audi of operating systems on the cheapest crap for hardware for a price no higher than windows. most don't know that a windows nda license which includes ms works is only forty dollars. os/2 alone then cost me 90 (all pcs at that time had paid thru intel a dos license fee and the upgrade version was an upgrade from everything). i finally restricted the builds to the best of breed and would only preload on scsi.
my own second os/2 machine (sept. 1994) was a built out alr revolution mp. it has two 90mhz pentiums, 64 meg ram, ati mach64 video, scsi, soundblaster, tecmar tv adapter, ibm m-audio card (for the voice type dictation), and of course os/2 2.11 smp (currenlty warpserver advanced -- though not in service -- still works!). it cost me 15,000 dollars. the memory alone was 3,000.
of course, there was and still is the "sig" problem! yet, once i eliminated the stupid through a miracle of economics. i was able to afford no cost tech support to all my os/2 people because well, generally speaking, os/2 just works. oh, yeah, i got few calls!!! in the hands of idiots, i've even seen netware just be crap ;-}
one of the most important reasons windows95 killed os/2 was how much money could be made fixing the unrepairable. my os/2 people paid a lot upfront; but, the windows people got reamed and reamed!! to bad the article didn't point that out!
in the u.s., the public broadcasting system used os/2 to upload all its time critical feeds. the smithsonian institution in washington dc ran on os/2 including the kiosks. i could go on; but, you know, the article seems to indicate just how lame the Ignorant Technology people at idg might have been? am i being cruel??