Skewed Web Statistics

In "Damn Lies" (February Network Project) you described how you collected statistics on which operating system people were using to talk to your Web site by detecting the Web browser and deducing the OS from this. You go on to point out that a very small percentage of people were using WebExplorer from IBM and consequently there were very few people using OS/2. I currently use Netsca pe 2.0 in WinOS/2 with the IBM Internet Dialer dialing into Ireland Online as my local provider. I'd be curious to see how your results would differ if you bore WinOS/2 users like me in mind.

Robert Healy
VTI
http:/ /www.vtilink.com
bhealy@iol.ie

Actually I thought the 4 percent for WebExplorer was relatively impressive, being half the number for all implementations of Mosaic. But you're right--several readers have pointed out that WinOS/2 plus Netscape has in many cases superseded WebExplorer, so the true number of OS/2-based visitors is larger but unknown. Ideally Netscape would report in its version string if it were running in WinOS/2 rather than Windows. Since WinOS/2 really is Windows, though, that might not be possible.--Jon Udell, executive editor