From: jahonen@cs.joensuu.fi (Jarmo Ahonen)
Subject: Re: NT Destined to Succeed??
Organization: University of Joensuu
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 07:43:18 GMT

rsrodger@wam.umd.edu (Yamanari) writes:

>In article <1993Jan4.073539.28697@cs.joensuu.fi> jahonen@cs.joensuu.fi (Jarmo Ahonen) writes:
>>If *I* want system integrity and stability, *I* would go for a Sparc Classic
>>or any other *real* workstation with a *real* OS. But because I want to run
>>all my old dirty software I bought OS/2. 

>	I don't much care if 9/10th of the games I play run or not,
>	nor do I care if most of my DOS programs (other than WP51 
>	and archive utilities) fail.  

True. I do not care about most of the things, but some pieces of code
written for specific purposes (and written *badly*) depend so much
on specific PC features that I see nightmares (:-) about porting them
to another OS... Most of those programs are in-house written and it
seems that I cannot get anybody else to do the porting if I need :-(.

>	The difference between whatNT offers and a Sun is that a Sun
>	will *never* have the same level of software support that NT
>	offers evenif NT really does only support the top 100 DOS
>	and Windows apps.  That's 200 off the shelf shrinkwrapped
>	(and pretty darn good) applications--and they're sure to be
>	the hottest selling ones (Ami Pro, Excel, Word, WP4Win, WP51,
>	Corel Draw 3, Adobe Illustrator, etc--most of which have promised
>	or *shown* NT specific [mightonly be win32s, tho] versions).

I'd trade *every* existing Windows based word-processing or DTP application
for the latest FrameMaker on a Sun. From my personal point of view there
is not even any contest... Unfortunately the Windows FrameMaker if not as
good as its big brothers from workstations. The other packages I need,
statistics, graphics etc, are often much better on workstations than on
Windows-platform. Unfortunately they are often so expensive that the
"bang for the buck" favors PC software.

>	A sun might be fun, but if your work is DTP and WP, it's not 
>	going to be nearly as good a choice to help get your work done.
>	(especially in terms of bang for the buck.. At least until
>	next year)

Well... As I said, personally I thing that the best DTP and WP software
*is* for workstations like Sun. I was actually quite shocked to find out
that PC world did not have as good word processing packages as FrameMaker
or Interleaf. If you say that I can get those apps for PC, then try to 
do something to a 150+ pages document full of equations and pictures...
Windows shows its worst features in that type of cases (IMHO).


>	Exactly.  People are looking seriously at NT because they know
>	what apps they want/need to run, but they are *extremely* unsatisfied
>	with the platform these have to run on.  (Note that I am not 
>	referring to Mr. and Mrs. Joe Blow computer user, who think
>	Win31 is just daydy, and whonever have any trouble because they
>	run no more than 1 program + the clock) 

Apps: Statistics for huge amounts of data (e.g. SAS), matlab, a word processing
      software for scientific texts/tech documents, a good drawing/designing
      software 
langs: FORTRAN-77 (-90), C, LISP, SmallTalk

Well... It seems that all those exist for Sun (or IBM RS/6000, or HP,
or DEC), and often as at least as good packages as for Windows.
Unfortunately they often cost *much* more :-(. But it might be that
my need are not normal for even average "power-user".

>	from now would be pushingit, and Dec would probably be miffed..])

For NT being late, I tend to think that DEC do not like even a little delay.
If *I* wanted an alpha, I'd get a UNIX or VMS one... :-)

>>During the meantime I will have enough time to use my OS/2 for a year or two.
>>After that time my machine will be at least a bit outdated and then NT does
>>not matter in any case...


>	Every system is outdated by the time you get it from the shop.

>	Kind of depressing.

Yep. I'm happy to use OS/2 now, and later on I'll reconsider things.
I have a personal preference for UNIX, but who knows what I can get at year
1994/1995... Now I think that OS/2 is the best choice for my PC -- OS/2
allows even 40+ MB process images for my software while I'm using WP51
at the same time when the process is running, try to do it 
with windows! :-)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy