From: foax@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Amigas are cool
Date: 30 Jul 92 23:13:26 EDT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Cornell University

In article <1992Jul26.201816.17230@seas.gwu.edu>,
gerald@seas.gwu.edu (Gerald G. Washington) writes: 
> addison@pollux.usc.edu (Richard Addison) writes:
>>barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N Barrett) writes:
>>}   Most such $1000 systems come with 2M of RAM.  To run OS/2 well, you need
>>}only add 6M, which is about $200-$250 at today's prices.  It has also been 
>>}mentioned that OS/2 will fit well onto a 60M drive, as long as you aren't
>>}trying to fit 40M of C++ development tools onto it as well.  60M SCSI drives
>>}can be had for $250 these days.
>>
>>What good is VM if you don't have any harddisk space left?
> 
> Hah, that is an excellent question.

It is a good question, but current hard-drive standards for the PC start at
120 Mb for new systems (at least the ones I'm considering).  Personally, I
think that 200 Mb is a better starting figure, as the new large operating
systems, big apps, and high-resolution deep-color screens are very demanding.
200 Mb IDE drives run around $500-$600 I believe.  SCSI drives for the PC
aren't worth the extra expense, as the performance improvement is modest
at best, and the setup difficulties with any SCSI system can be formidable.
IDE setup is far easier.  If you really want to improve disk performance,
the best way to do it is to use a substantial (1-2 Mb) software RAM cache.
(I know, somebody's going to say, "But that's a memory hog!"  Well, these
days, RAM is cheap, and time will never be.  Neither are SCSI drives.  But
you can always use a smaller cache.)

Now somebody, somewhere, is going to accuse PC programmers or OS makers
of "code bloat" at this very moment (though they might not post it, but
I've seen it here before).  Personally, I doubt this accusation.  The
Amiga has some very good programmers, but that doesn't make PC programmers
incompetent idiots.  Maybe I'm naive, but the only real "code bloat" I can
imagine would involve either areas of unused code or large regions of
null bytes.  Somehow I doubt it.  Until somebody shows me a number of
examples of this behavior (we all know its possible to come up with one or
two oddities), I'm not going to believe it.  Now if some of you think
that PC programs have too many features, that's another matter.  Maybe if
enough of you and your fellows complained, software houses would start to
come out with "lite" versions of their software, with lower prices and lower
hardware and space requirements.

> I have been looking at various 486 systems, and I have found that it is not
> nearly as inexpensive as one my think to get a "powerhouse" system.  You need
> lots of RAM, lots of disk space, a good video card, sound card, etc.  Although
> these things are fairly cheap individually,
> 	cheap + cheap + cheap = not_so_cheap.
> I could get a good 486 system for under $2000 if I only wanted to run PD
> software.

I'm not sure how much power you're shooting for.  I expect to get a system
with 4 Mb RAM, 200 Mb hard disk, good, fast video, and a SoundBlaster
for about $2600.  Maybe I'm being a bit optimistic, but you can certainly
get a hot system for less than $3000 total.  (I don't want 8 Mb RAM yet,
as I'm not getting one of the new OS's until I see who's winning.  OS/2
could well be dying by June '93.  As for SoundBlaster Pro, Pro Audio Spectrum
16, etc., I'm going to wait to see who becomes standard there before
getting a more expensive sound board.)
-- 

--Colin Howell			email to howell@astrosun.tn.cornell.edu
--Cornell Astronomy Dept.	(hopefully switching to computer science)