From: don@chopin.udel.edu (Donald R Lloyd)
Subject: Re: Byte's Amiga 4000 review...
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 03:19:42 GMT

 papresco@cantor.math.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod) writes:
>
>What is it that you think is in OS/2 that wasn't invented (probably by
>IBM) long, long before the Amiga?  Just because there hasn't been a
>"widely available multitasking OS for the Intel architecture" doesn't
>mean that multitasking originated with the Amiga.  If the Amiga had
>never existed, OS/2 would have been multitasking in competition with
>Windows, NeXT, SysVR4.2, Solaris, NT and VMS.

     OS/2 was a project started by MS and IBM after the Amiga had already
been on the market for a while.  Every once in a while around here someone
brings up the posting on an internal bulletin board at IBM in the early days
of OS/2 development in which one of the programmers said something like,
"Why don't we just buy AmigaOS from Commodore and save ourselves four years?".

>Or did they ALL steal the concept from the Amiga.

     Yep. :-)

>As to REXX...It's not a very nice language anyways.  The only reason
>IBM includes it is because ALL of their operating systems do.  I would
>prefer if they would replace it with Perl or something.  It was by no
>means "borrowed" from the Amiga.

     MicroSoft wanted to use a version of BASIC as the integrating language
ofr OS/2.  Someone brought in some Amigas to show what could be done with
AREXX, and MS conceded; REXX became part of OS/2.


>An SVGA 486 system without hard drive would be the same price as the
>$600.00 A1200.  Except you would have a real CPU.  For kicks you could
>throw in a soundboard, for $250.00 that has a 68000 on it.  No, the
>Amiga does NOT have a patent on coprocessing.  There are cheap
>soundboards for the PC that have as much CPU power as the A600!

     ....But still doesn't sound as good.  :-)
     I haven't used a 1200 yet, but _for_ _me_ and for what I like to
do with a computer, my A3000 simply blows away the 486/33 I use 
(grudgingly) all day at work.


>I spend time here combatting inaccuracies like 486s 
>that sell for twice the price of A1200.  Check out this month's
>computer shopper.  486s for <$1000.00 WITH hard drive AND monitor!
>Take out the hard drive and monitor, and you are at A1200 price!

     But making that 486 able to run my Amiga software would require
the purchase of an A600, which kind of puts a damper on that price
advantage... 

>This is of course  a ridiculous comparison.  A 486sx with no hard drive
>is useless, and an A1200 without hard drive is pretty damn near useless
>too.  It is excellent competiton for a super nintendo, though.


     ... whereas the 486SX would have trouble keeping up with the SNES :-)

     The Amiga OS can be run from floppy, as can most applications.  Try
doing a full-blown OS/2 install to a 1.44 meg disk.

>I also hang out here for kicks watching the Amiga users defect one by
>one.

     It's interesting that when I took my Amiga to work (to get some things
done more efficiently than I could have on my 486), several of the people
who saw me using it were amazed.  One of them is now saving for a 1200, 
and another has started buying copies of Amiga magazines to learn more about
the machines.  These are both former die-hard DOS/Windows/OS2 users.
     Who's defecting?


-- 
Don Lloyd                / "No, I just think that a computer grafted on top of \
don@chopin.udel.edu      | another computer is a kludge.  It has nothing to do |
GeNIE: D.LLOYD7          \ with the Intel CPU"  - Jerry Shekhel                /
BIX: DRL