Neptune Project

So what is it really?

Neptune is actually giant project to provide and document skins for PM123. Before your brush it off, consider that there are 1900 skins available. The enormity of this collection is mind-boggling! Because not only are there that many skins, all of it is tested and documented in .INF files. The .INF files are freely downloadable, so you can see for yourself what's in the catalog.

What you pay for is the CD with the actual skins plus some "other stuff". We'll go into details about that later because I should point out that there are two versions of Neptune. Neptune-1000, as you might imagine, is smaller than Neptune-1900. They contain 1000 skins and 1900 skins, respectively. The Neptune-1900 CD also includes more "other stuff". So what's the difference?

Neptune-1000

Neptune 1000 costs 12Euro (including shipping) in Europe and 15Euro (including shipping) to the rest of the world and comes with the following:

• Total of 4 serviceable INF files offering a detailed overview of all offered skins for PM123.
• Total of 1,000 excellent skins for the PM123 player.
• Neptune-CD Cover (StarOffice 5.1 format)
• 40 FREE skins for PM123
• The latest English file MIKE92E.INF version 0.20
• The latest Czech file MIKE133.INF version 1.44
• 102 PDF files related to OS/2
• PM123 version 1.1 Beta 4
• The latest English file PM123man.INF version 0.96
• Several plug-in programs for PM123

Now I should note that at least some the .PDF files aren't just fluff. They are a bunch of highly useful presentations including OS/2 history, USB device driver design, Rexx tutorials, how to install Fixpaks, etc. A lot of it seems to be Warpstock presentations. As far as I know, this is a legal (someone can correct me if I'm wrong), normal, freely available stuff, but conveniently packaged for you in one place. (The PM123 is, of course, un-registered).

Neptune-1900

Neptune 1900 costs a bit more as you might imagine. 19Euro for Europe and 22Euro for the rest of the world (all including shipping). So what do you get for the extra money? You get everything in Neptune-1000 and on top of that:

• Total of 7 serviceable INF files offering a detailed overview of all offered skins for PM123.
• Total of 1,900 excellent skins for the PM123 player. (900 extra skins on top of Neptune 1000, not 1900 more)
• 80 interesting images from my website.

If you think 1000 skins is worth 15Euro, then you're getting a pretty good deal, 900 skins for only 7Euro more. As for the pictures? Well, some of them are amusing, but there are a lot of screenshots of various games and desktops. It's just a bonus (and they're freely downloadable from the web site anyways).

The Skins

Of course, the whole point of this project is the skins themselves. The Neptune project makes it quite easy to pick what you want, as all of the skins have been captured and catalogued.

If you're a big fan of skinning PM123, this is a big time saver. My previous method consisting of right-clicking the menu in PM123 loading up a skin, and repeat ad-nauseum until I get one I like. Now, all I have to do is scan through the .INF, which makes things a whole lot easier.

I should note one thing. The .INF files display beautifully and come up fast with the native viewer that comes with OS/2 (VIEW.EXE). It also looks great in NewView but it takes a few seconds for each page to render. With the regular help viewer, everything comes up instantaneously.

Conclusion

With shipping, this CD isn't too expensive. It's similar to the $9.99 CD's I see being sold in the electronics and computer shops around town, with similar type of content. (i.e. vast collections of simple utilities and/or graphics). If PM123 is one of your absolutely essential utilities, this might be worth it for you.

Also not to be overlooked is the collection of .PDF presentations (there are 100MB's worth of .PDF's). While some of it is only mildly interesting, there are a few good gems in there. Unless you're like me and you're wired to a 10Mb/s connection all day for free or cheap, it might save you money to order this CD rather than trying downloading everything by yourself. I understand that some of the dial-up fees and phone charges in most parts of the world are not insignficant.

One thing I do question is the distribution of certain IBM Redbooks. While these are freely available to anyone who wants them (from IBM), I'm not sure about the legality of re-distribution.

However, the biggest problem I see isn't so much with the skins themselves (they're good skins and well documented), but that it relies on PM123. I like PM123 (I'm a registered user), but it's definitely still a beta product and the last update was over 2 years ago. Maybe with a bit of work, this project can be ported to work with Warpvision instead, which is still alive and well.

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