HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: fihsu@athena.mit.edu (Hsu I-wei)
Subject: Re: HELP--AMIGA OR IBM PC CLONE?
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 00:25:00 GMT

In article <C0I9Kz.FoH@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu> papresco@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu (Paul Prescod) writes:
>>Why don't you just call Creative Computers and get one?  I paid less than
>>$2800 before the price cuts and I'd bet that they are even less expensive
>>now.  It's as easy as calling Gateway 2000...
>
>Ease isn't everything!  First: How much customizing can you get with
>that?  Can you tell them the brand of hard drive, and the interface?  And
>the speed of the ram?  And the video card maker?  And the sound card?

Well, considering that hard drive interface, AGA video and sound are built-in..
but yes, if you so desire you could add on one of several video cards that
Creative Computers sells.. same goes for sound cards. Speed of RAM? I believe
that the 6 megs which come with the A4000 are at the minimal speed to provide
maximum performance. (In other words, putting faster RAM in it wouldn't give
it a performance boost.) That's the case with the A3000 at least.. don't know
about the A4000. But the person who mentioned Creative Computers was asking
why not call Creative Computers to get the Amiga for cheaper which your
response (or mine) has nothing to do with.

>
>And if you put these things in yourself, is it still under warranty?
>
>And what exactly are you getting for your $2800.00? (US!!!)  Is that a
>240MB hard drive, and 8MB of Ram and a CD-ROM?  I would hope so for
>that price.

Nope, you get a 120MB hard drive and 6 MB of RAM.. no CD-ROM. Then again, you
get the Zorro III bus. I don't see Gateway advertising EISA machines for
$2800.

Francis

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: gerald@seas.gwu.edu (Gerald G. Washington)
Subject: Re: HELP--AMIGA OR IBM PC CLONE?
Organization: George Washington University
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 20:14:19 GMT

ronnie@lysator.liu.se (Ronnie Sahlberg) writes:
>Ray_Hines@dream.uucp (Ray Hines) writes:
>
>>Yup, they can indeed take all sorts of monitors, video cards, etc.  If
>>you're REALLY into graphics power on the Amiga, go out and by a VIVID 24
>>bit card with 4 co-processers.  The manufacture says it is faster than a
>>$200,000 Silicon Graphics Workstation. Wheeeeeeeeeee!
>
>Be real.
>Just how much use is that kind of hardware on the amiga for the regular user ?

Isn't that an irrelevant question?  Regular users of any PC don't use 24-bit
graphics cards with 4 coprocessors.  Most likely, the person buying such a
card will want to run graphics-intensive applications, rather than running
WordPerfect with 16 million colors.

-- Gerald
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: torrie@cs.stanford.edu (Evan Torrie)
Subject: Re: HELP--AMIGA OR IBM PC CLONE?
Originator: torrie@Xenon.Stanford.EDU
Organization: DSO, Stanford University
Date: 12 Jan 93 09:12:41 GMT

skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Skip Sauls) writes:
 
>Intel talks about OverDrive, "speed doubling", and that sort of thing 
>in their ads.  Nowhere do they explain that only the internal circuitry
>is double speed.  Motorola could say the same thing about the 68040 as
>it too runs at 50MHz internally...

 Sigh.  The 040 doesn't complete an instruction every 50MHz clock. The
486/DX2 does.

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evan Torrie.  Stanford University, Class of 199?       torrie@cs.stanford.edu 
Embrace rationalism, reject superstition.           Break away from the past.
"...there is only one thing worse than having marketing people on a project,
 and that is having no marketing people on a project."  - Larry Tesler.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy,comp.sys.amiga.misc
From: damiel@netcom.com (Paul Theodoropoulos)
Subject: Re: Don't let the Amiga Die (Part II)!!!
X-Spook-Fodder: hero heroin tree shrub bush birth life death FBI CIA NSA
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 20:22:36 GMT

In <1993Jan7.185129.24731@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> jerry@msi.com (Jerry Shekhel) writes:
 
[political discussion deleted]

please take this to email, or to the appropriate newsgroup.

thanks.


-- 
paul theodoropoulos     damiel@netcom.com     (hooools@well.sf.ca.us)

"Those who will trade essential liberty for promise of security will have
 neither" - Benjamin Franklin
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett)
Subject: Re: No BS at all
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 01:55:50 GMT

In article <58243@dime.cs.umass.edu> barrett@astro.cs.umass.edu (Daniel Barrett) writes:
>>In article <58226@dime.cs.umass.edu> barrett@astro.cs.umass.edu (Daniel Barrett) writes:
>>>Next, there's this "PrintMonitor" thing.
>>That is true, but I get around it by using a third-party package called
>>PowerPrint that comes with a VERY nice print spooler.  
>
>	I thought we were talking about the supplied OS only.  Several of
>the Amiga problems you mentioned in your original post are also easily
>solved using 3rd party programs.  For example, there are a half dozen
>excellent cut/paste programs that work across all applications.

   Anothe Macintosh nicety is that ALL Macintosh paint programs support 
structured graphics.  Is there a third-party utility that will allow me to
use IFF DR2D structured graphics with DPaint IV without converting the
images to bitmaps?

>>>Now let's talk about performance.  These were 68030 machine with a
>>>minimum of 8MB RAM.  And yet, when I did any printing, the stupid mouse
>>>pointer became extremely sluggish and jerky.
>
>>Those are more problems with the engine, and not with a surface detail.  
>>Don't change the subject.
>
>	I didn't change the subject.  I think it is very much a "surface"
>issue.  When a user pushes the mouse, the mouse pointer should move
>proportionally.  It doesn't.  That's about as simple a "surface" issue as
>one could imagine.

   BTW, strangely enough, this does not happen with Macintosh software running
under A-Max.  Probably another reason why I prefer running Macintosh software
on an Amiga to running Macintosh software on a Macintosh.  Under A-Max, the
mouse pointer always moves freely with no jerkiness, no matter what the disk
drives or hard drives are doing.


---
| Marc Barrett -MB-  |  email: barrett@iastate.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"No, I just think that a computer grafted on top of another computer
is a kludge.  It has nothing to do with the AGA chipset." -- me
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: tmc@spartan.ac.BrockU.CA (Tim Ciceran)
Subject: Re: More Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths
Organization: Brock University, St. Catharines Ontario
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 20:28:56 GMT

In article <C0HIuH.534@news.udel.edu> don@chopin.udel.edu (Donald R Lloyd)
writes:

>     OK, I'll bite.  What's Terminus?

<shhh!> The successor to JR-Comm.

>     My big problem with Term is that it uses XPRZModem.library, which seems
>to start getting error messages at the slightest sign of another running
>task...

Term is rather bloated as well, although the distribution of the source code
has certainly made life a lot easier for many of us. Another liability has
been the VT100 emulation. Is it functional yet?
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: AmigaDOS 2.1 comments
From: martin@TIGGER.STCLOUD.MSUS.EDU (Psigon Matrix....do you DOUBT us??)
Date: 12 Jan 93 21:49:28 -0600
Reply-To: martin@TIGGER.STCLOUD.MSUS.EDU
Organization: St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN

In article <AfIlaWq00VIDMB1hVB@andrew.cmu.edu>, angst+@CMU.EDU (Jon C. Slenk) writes:
>I have an A500 with the clock/ram expansion, a RocTec SCSI/IDE interface
>with a Maxtor LXT340SY SCSI drive, a 1084(?) monitor (can't remember that
>darned number exactly) and an external floppy drive. I think I have an ECS
>Agnus but an OCS Denise.
>
>- redrawing the windows is VERY SLOW. i can't understand why the Amiga,
>with its specialized graphics hardware can't redraw a few overlapping
>windows in a reasonable amount of time. i find that as i move, open and
>close windows the time it takes to redraw is too long and i move the
>pointer, which then jumps drastically once the windows have been drawn.
>the response time here is as bad as 1.3 and i find that unacceptable

Perhaps you are in 16-color mode...try 4 or 8.


>
>- you shouldn't have to select "snapshot" all the time. what should happen
>is that whenever you close a window, it snapshots the icons and window
>automatically.

Auto snapshoting isn't really necessary. Odds are if you set up your icons
once w/ the snapshot command you will leave them.

>
>- you should be able to move windows partly off of the screen without
>having to make the workbench be virtually large. it is annyoing when you
>click on a zoom gadget for the window to go off the screen. it is annoying
>to have the screen scroll around if you move a window a leetle too far off
>the edge.
>

Agreed.


>- the shell should have a damned scroll bar!
>


Once again I agree

>- the dichotomy between the CLI and the workbench should be fixed up
>somehow. examples: i don't like the fact that there are .info files
>everywhere and that if there isn't a .info file for something it doesn't
>appear on the workbench. the OS should take care of figuring out what
>things are and making default icons for them (at least make this an option
>the user can turn on or off - i would like the os to make default icons,
>but maybe not everyone would).

Go to the Window menu and pick SHOW ALL...will solve your problem.

>
>That's all I can think of for right now.
>
>Sincerely,
>-Jon.
>
>----------------------------------------------------
>Jon Slenk           angst+@cmu.edu     EVERYTHING is
>Carnegie Mellon     Pittsburgh PA      Disclaimed
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Screeeemmmmmin fast 4000/040..YEEEEEEHA!!          X-ASOCC (CBM Blew that one)
          Jim Martin   MATRIX -- If it's made, we sell it. Almost.
  -----(612) 656-9693--                         MARTIN@TIGGER.STCLOUD.MSUS.EDU
      We're almost done with the Cray module for the EmPlanT.  :) heh
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: mlelstv@specklec.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Michael van Elst)
Subject: Re: CBM mention on 12/11/92 Computer Chronicles
Organization: Max-Planck-Institut f"ur Radioastronomie
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 23:17:56 GMT

In <1993Jan4.204108.367@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> jerry@msi.com (Jerry Shekhel) writes:
>Michael van Elst (mlelstv@speckled.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de) wrote:

>Hardly.  Do you have any idea how VM works, or what it does?  If you're
>talking about multitasking several CPU-intensive apps, a decent VM system
>can only help.  Yes, that's right.  The application's working set always
>remains in RAM, while the dormant part is swapped out, resulting in more free
>RAM for applications, WITHOUT any significant performance degradation.  This
>means that you can multitask more CPU-intensive applications than you could
>on a system without VM while not lowering your performance.

Look at the size of the working set of average PC programs.

>If you're talking about multitasking several non-CPU-intensive apps, well,
>VM could only be an advantage there, obviously.

Think about it. It doesn't matter if a program uses little or much CPU
time. As soon as it hits paged out memory it will stall until the OS
has loaded the page into memory again.

So, independent of CPU usage, if a program _needs_ VM it gets slower.
In a VM system you _want_ to have as much physical memory as the sum
of all working sets of all loaded programs. For PC programs this is
quite similar to the total size of all programs.

That leaves VM on a PC as a stopgap to avoid failing programs because
they ran out of memory.

>Seriously, all these claims of VM slowing down performance are absolute
>rubbish.

Watch a nicely paging workstation disk and pray it isn't made by Seagate.

>Take a course in OS design.

Another one ?

Regards,
-- 
Michael van Elst
UUCP:     universe!local-cluster!milky-way!sol!earth!uunet!unido!mpirbn!p554mve
Internet: p554mve@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
                                "A potential Snark may lurk in every tree."
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett)
Subject: Re: More Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 02:59:54 GMT

In article <1ifvblINNb48@uwm.edu> bloc1469@ee.ee.uwm.edu (Gregory R Block) writes:
>Personally, I'd say dump WP and use TeX.  It's amazingly
>cross-compatible.  :)

   So is PostScript, and TeX bares a far greater resemblance to PostScript 
than to WP.  No, thanks.  I don't feel like putting 10 hours of programming
in to design a page, when I can do it with Mac WP in ten seconds.

---
| Marc Barrett -MB-  |  email: barrett@iastate.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"No, I just think that a computer grafted on top of another computer
is a kludge.  It has nothing to do with the AGA chipset." -- me
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: papresco@cantor.math.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod)
Subject: Re: Byte's Amiga 4000 review...
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 11:58:42 GMT

>     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. :-)

I love anecdotal evidence...it's so "authoritative."  Do you want to
OUTLINE what in OS/2 you believe was "borrowed" from the Amiga?

>
>>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.
>
Will you listen to what I'm saying here...even if Microsoft had
included basic with OS/2, they would have had to include REXX too, if
it is going to be an operating system IBM sold.  They had no choice.
That's what SAA/CUA is all about, cross platform compatibility.  You
can't choose REXX for CMS and Basic for OS/2...it's one language for
all IBM operating systems, and that language was REXX before the Amiga
existed!
>
>     ....But still doesn't sound as good.  :-)

(this is about PC sound boards) Just which ones have you heard lately?
Please don't tell me those out-of-date Soundblasters.

>     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.

When we talk about computers without hard drives, we aren't really
talking about computers any more.  We are talking about consoles.
Indeed, I think those little console cartridges probably have as much
memory as a 1.44 MB floppy disk, and a much better access time!

>
>     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?
>
We'll see six months from now, when there are 3 or 4 486 clones, Intel
is dumping the Pentium to kill off the clone business and prices are
falling through the floor....we'll see who defects then.
>
From: marks@castle.ed.ac.uk (Mark Steyn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: HELP--AMIGA OR IBM PC CLONE?
Date: 12 Jan 93 14:15:04 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

papresco@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu (Paul Prescod) writes:

>There is no "sameness" in the PC-world.  95% of all Amigas run
>AmigaDOS, the rest run that rotten unix you have.  PC users can run 20
>different versions of Unix, OS/2, Windows, NT, Dos, QNX, NeXTStep,
>DR-DOS, CPM-86, you name it.  That's not stifling sameness, it's
>resounding choice.

Yet 95% run Dos or Windows.

>Most Amiga users use one of 2 or 3 wordprocessors.  There are 97 PC
>wordprocessors.

>All Amiga users use some form of Zorro bus.  PC users can choose one of
>VESA,EISA, ISA, MCA, PCI and any combination of them!

You see this as an advantage?  You have a multitude of different 
standards and yet parade it as a strength.  

>All Amiga users use Motorola chips.  PC users can use AMD, Cyrix, or
>Intel.

Which all share the same common instructions.  You have a choice of
manufacturers yet the end result is the same "stifling sameness".

	Mark

-- 
      "We all want to be Obi Wan Kenobi,       \ Mark Steyn :          \
  But there's a little Darth Vader in us all"   \ marks@castle.ed.ac.uk \
           Chris, Northern Exposure              \ mpjs@dcs.ed.ac.uk     \
From: tmc@spartan.ac.BrockU.CA (Tim Ciceran)
Subject: Re: RISC Amiga?
Organization: Brock University, St. Catharines Ontario
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 03:43:30 GMT

In article <C0pALJ.8qF@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu> papresco@cantor.math.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod) writes:

>Yes, and once the 68060 IS released (probably over a year from now and
>behind schedule), how long will it take for a stock Amiga to
>incorporate it.  They are selling PCs that can use the Pentium already.

The A4000 is 68060 and RISC-ready by virtue of the modular CPU slot.

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: dusek@cadsun.corp.mot.com (James Dusek)
Subject: Re: More Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths
Organization: Motorola, Inc., Software Research and Development, Rolling Meadows, IL. 60008
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 93 16:23:53 GMT

barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
>   The inelegance of the OS probably has something to do with it.  A person 
>can sit down at an unconfigured, uncustomized Macintosh for the first time
>and figure out how to use it in minutes.

	This is true.

>An Amiga -- especially one with the
>default out-of-the-box preferences in place -- is a MUCH more difficult system
>to use.  AmigaOS 2.0 still has not changed much, really.  You have to add a
>lot of PD/freeware utilities to the system and make major changes to the
>preferences to make an Amiga more attractive and usable.

	This is total BS. A person has to be a real idiot not to
be able to learn the Amiga GUI as fast as a mac's. The main problem
is if you take a person who has used a mac for 6 years than have them
use an Amiga. They will find it harder than if it was a computer new-
commer. But if a person has never touched a computer before, the Amiga
interface is just as easy as a mac interface. I have several friens who
have never purchased a computer before by an Amiga, and have no problems
with the GUI. 

	Your spewing your crap across the nets again. 

James Dusek

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
From: zarthac@bradley.edu (Matthew Simmons)
Subject: Re: To VM or not to VM?
Organization: J. Random Misconfigured Site
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 07:42:43 GMT
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]
X-Posted-From: cs1.bradley.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol.ctr.columbia.edu

Marc N. Barrett (barrett@iastate.edu) wrote:
: In article <1993Jan6.200547.17217@seas.gwu.edu> gerald@seas.gwu.edu (Gerald G. Washington) writes:
: >abuhr@owlnet.rice.edu (Aaron M. Buhr) writes:
: >>     The Amiga advocates' argument against VM seems ...
: >
: >... unreasonable, since the Amiga has VM.

:    As standard software, as OS/2 and the Macintosh does?  No.  Does the Amiga
: have an unsupported third-party VM system available for it?  Yes.

: ---
: | Marc Barrett -MB-  |  email: barrett@iastate.edu
: --------------------------------------------------------------------
: "No, I just think that a computer grafted on top of another computer
: is a kludge.  It has nothing to do with the AGA chipset." -- me



Oh God, please......  Just one bullet....

--
---------------------------------------------------------
My newsreader is screwed up... Therefore, it doesn't print the machine
name for email... Please send all email to zarthac@cs1.bradley.edu or
zarthac@camelot.bradley.edu
---

Millions of lemmings can't be wrong -- throw yourself off a cliff
Remember to always be a visionary, or someone will do it for you and beat you.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy,comp.sys.amiga.graphics
From: davereed@wam.umd.edu (Michael Robert Bromery)
Subject: Re: VistaPro & clones
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 07:06:04 GMT

   Well, about the discussion of whether america sees computers like the amiga
as simply a toy is something that differs according to age. Actually, I've
noticed that there is a much better response for the amiga market from the
young adults and the younger generations as opposed to the adults over 30.
I can't say that this is true for all in the groups but as an average.
Quite a bit of the adults over 30 don't know any other system than a PC in
america for it is about the only thing advertised in the states. Even worse,
it's not the actual International buisiness machines that are doing the 
commercializing, but intel themselves. As of for years, I only see Intel on
the tv. There are alot more of the over 30 age group that do believe that 
anything other than an IBM compatible is simply a toy and nothing to be
taken too seriously. The number one average of people I've talked to are people
who work at Radio Shack. Actually, I'm surprised at how awe-inspired the
young american public around here are of the amiga, but are really afraid of
lack of support. In a town such as Columbia Maryland, where the computer 
buisiness is so scarce that the only software you can find are PC software
and hardly any MAC APPLE AMIGA or any other computer system, people are saying
I'd love to have one, but I fear for support. 
      
       I can't wait till commodore realizes how close they are to reeling in
a crowd with some commercials. When they get some american publicity, I'm 
sure they will have quite a few new customers. I can say for myself that I'm
guilty of getting several people to get Amigas just by showing them what is
there. 


--- Mike
   Email: davereed@wam.umd.edu
From: jprad@faatcrl.faa.gov (Jack Radigan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: A4000 Pricing
Date: 11 Jan 1993 11:56:54 -0500
Organization: FAA Technical Center, Pomona, NJ
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: faatcrl.faa.gov

mlelstv@specklec.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Michael van Elst) writes:

>>  If the set of all capitalists are greedy then how can a Power Up program
>>be offered in country of capitalists?

>If a powerup program increases sales ond profit the people still look
>greedy :)

  Too bad that kind of greed isn't more common then, eh? ;-)

  -jack-