From: chucks@pnet51.orb.mn.org (Erik Funkenbusch)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy,comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Re: Considering switching to IBM
Date: 6 Apr 92 19:45:04 GMT
Article-I.D.: orbit.7414
Organization: People-Net [pnet51], Minneapolis, MN.

[Newsgroups changed....]

First off, let me explain my current situation.

I am now running on an 12Mhz 286 system, i run windows, i run games, i run
compilers (Turbo C++ for windows), i run comm packages (Telix), etc...

I can safely say that windows on a 286 is a nightmare.  It's slow, and only
allows a modest task switching, you cannot download "in the backroud" without
losing characters.

I know, Telix isn't a windows app, your right.  I tried using a few windows
terms, but they didn't work (i had friends bring over their copies to test),
thus i'm back to Telix.

Windows does NOT have priorities.  You can control how much CPU time the
foreground and backround get, but this is only time slicing.  the foreground
program will get as much CPU time as you give it, whether it's waiting or
doing work.  This is NOT the same thing as priorities.

I had an Amiga upto about 3 weeks ago.  I owned one for years.  I love it, and
was very difficult to switch to an clone only, but i needed the money.. but
that's another story.

The Amiga *CAN* have problems with serial transfers in 16 color mode WHEN
using the built in serial port at high speed.  There are several solutions to
this, one of which is to buy ANY serial port that sits on the expansion bus. 
This eliminates the contention with the video ram cycles.  This problem is
ONLY because of the serial ports design, not because of 16 colors, or
anything else.

Even in 16 colors my 500 (7 mhz 68000) was TONS faster at graphics than my
286.  I recently had the "pleasure" to see a game from the amiga that was
ported to the IBM played on a 33Mhz 486, i was surprised by how sluggish and
slow the display was.  (i wasn't really that surprised, since in know the
architecture)  The game was SpeedBall 2.

The speed of the processor has NO bearing on how fast the graphics are, nor do
they have much bearing on how well downloading works.  The graphics are
strictly DMA, which means the CPU has little to do with them.  The serial port
is Interupt controlled, but the problem is that the serial port is on the
video bus, and if the video display has all the video bus cycles taken, the
processor cannot get to the serial port to service it fast enough.

But as i said, anything on the expansion bus does not suffer from this
limitation.

The Amiga's operating system has the least OS overhead of virtually any
Multitasking OS, because of this, it can switch tasks faster, and give better
response.  The Amiga also has an OS that was designed to Multitask, thus it
knows how to "go to sleep" when it has nothing to do, not busy waiting like
most Dos applications do.

Yes, the Amiga's workbench is very similar to the Windows Program Manager or
Mac Finder(or multi-finder) in the way it interacts with people, however most
people use the term Workbench to mean the whole OS, not just the GUI.

AmigaOS 2.0 is just as pretty to look at as the Mac's System 7, or Windows
3.[0,1] or OS/2, so don't complain about how "plain" it looks.

I can go on.. but i don't think i will, if anyone follows up to this, i don't
think you can refute much of what i've said.

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