From: jstc_ss@troi.cc.rochester.edu (j. collins)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: YA Mac horror story
Date: 26 Jan 93 14:18:07 GMT
Organization: University of Rochester - Rochester, New York

In <kfNAq3u00VqJ0_SUkW@andrew.cmu.edu> cj00+@andrew.cmu.edu (Carl B Jabido) writes:

>Well, where should I start?  I guess that dreadful day when my prof told
>me we'd be using Object Pascal Genie for the class (surprisingly written
>here at CMU on Macs, by a bunch of computer illiterates).  Into my head

I have seen Genie Pascal, and I will tell you that it is worse than 
Mac Pascal which is god awful bad.

>even edit it!  By the way, this is all on a IIci with 8 megs of Physical
>ram.

>Well, I decided I'd see what software this Mac had, so I started looking
>around.  Of course, I couldn't quit Genie Pascal because of low memory,
>so I was using a crippled Mac.  I loaded up MacWrite II.  Pretty cool,

I am curious, why couldn't you quit Genie Pascal due to the low memory?

>pretty neat.  I closed that window.  I then loaded up Mathematica. 
>Pretty cool, pretty neat.  I closed that window.  Because I'm so lucky
>with Macs, I started looking around again, and all of a sudden, the
>system locked up.  Why?  Well, I was closing only the document, not the
>whole app.  But wait, most other systems close the app when you close
>the document, so why not the Mac?  I mean, it makes sense; if I'm not
>gonna work on Document X which uses MacWrite II, why should Macwrite II
>be loaded in the system?  

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that if I close a document
I may actually want to open another document without the application
quiting.  What a concept

>The stupid cluster people disabled cntrl-openapple-reset, so I had to
>turn it off and on.  No big deal, but why they did it is still beyond me.

The stupid cluster people are not that stupid.  The IIci has hardwired
reset buttons on the front of the machine.  It does not support 
ctrl-*command*-reset.

>So, now I'm up and running again.  The stupid cluster people left
>virtual memory off: how stupid.  So, I up it to 10 megs, so I can run
>the God forbidden Pascal Genie.

Wait you have 8 megs of physical memory, and then you have 10 megs of
total memory with virtual.  STUPID.  System 7's VM scheme is brain dead.
To gain the two megs of extra memory you just lost about 350k of memory
along with 10 megs of disk space.

>server.  Log in, and now, all of a sudden, the system locks up.  No cute
>little watch cursor.  What's going on?  Oh, there it is, two small
>arrows up in the corner, a place not normally looked at.  Network access
>I guess.  Okay, I have my system again.  I double click on the new
>volume (very nice implementation!  In fact, that's what OS/2 does too). 
>Okay, I traverse the server till I get to my class section.  Wow, Mac's
>built in network is slower than my NFS connection across the country;
>hmmm.  After 1 minute of no usage time, I get to use the system again. 
>Wow, the file I need is 512k.  Should I do it?  Ahh, I guess there's no
>other way.  After a 2 minute file transfer of only 512k, it returns
>control too me.  I note that I could have made the same file transfer
>over FTP at a little over 1.3E3 bytes per second on my "horrible OS/2
>PC."  

we do not have this problem since we are converting all of our classroom 
labs over to ethernet.

>Jeez, what a relief to get out of there.

Same feelings about getting to the end of this post

>Carl Jabido

>ps- that was mostly true.  the exaggerated parts weren't exaggerated
>that much, at least no more than 10%.  BTW, I'm not that stupid, I'm
>just making obvious remarks.  Just to piss off some Mac owners.  I had
>to wake you up to the fact that Macs aren't the ultimate computer. 
>There are some nice things about the system.  Generally however, I don't
>like it.  It may be easy to use, in fact, I'll personally vouch for the
>fact that it's probably the easiest computer to use to date.

gee you do not like the mac, well gosh darn it we should all run out and
get rid of our computers just because you do not like them.

Just based on reading you post above I would take you for a SNOT NOSE
little freshman with about one semester of use of macintoshes.  I used to be
the same way towards macs but I started to use them and I found that I 
accomplished alot more on a mac than I ever did when I was using 
DOS/Window's based machines, a variety of unix boxes (mostly suns) and
the Next (I know this could be technically called a unix box, but according
to alot of the NeXT advocates out there you never have to use unix while
on a NeXT.)

It is your choice of the computer you want to use, just like it is my choice
of what type of computer I want to use.

peace,
-justin m. collins <jstc_ss@troi.cc.rochester.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy