From: das9674@usl.edu (Stephenson Daniel A)
Subject: Re: Oh my God! Help my friend not buy an IBM!
Organization: University of Southwestern Louisiana
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 23:12:06 GMT

White, conservative, atheist from the South you may be, BUT:

In article <1992Nov9.200117.27089@cs.olemiss.edu> skip@cs.olemiss.edu (Skip Sauls) writes:
>Sounds like you are one of those boring people who use computers for such
>mundane tasks as word processing, spreadsheets, and that sort of thing.

Huh?  This started out about using the computer for engineering.
I think it would be reasonable to assume that the PC would be better than an
Amiga in the case.

As for word processing and speadsheet - they are only practical.  They day the
Amiga gets a good WordPerfect/Word/AmiPro and Excel/1-2-3 is the day the Amiga
get looks at.

>Try to equip a PC for multimedia and you'll see one area in which the Amiga
>is much better suited.  The company I work for is putting together systems
>for salesmen to take on the road with them, consisting of the CPU, a genlock,
>a laserdisk, audio capability, and software.  The PC systems require an SVGA
>board with genlock capability ($500 for a decent one), a SoundBlaster Pro
>(which still does measure up to the native Amiga audio), 8M RAM if you are
>running Windows, and at least a 386-33 for minimal performance.  By contrast,
>an Amiga A1200 will do everything that the Clone will and do it better.

I do not know of ANY multimedia software for the Amiga.  Do you really think the
CDTV can match (an admittedly much more expensive) an IBM Ultimedia system??
PC 'genlocks'/TV-in-a-window cost $250-ish at my local Babbages.  Heck, that
looks REAL good.  While the native Amiga audio is great, it does not measure up
to the high end sound cards available for PCs - Get this: the ONLY people who
will really take advantage of any superior sound will be musicians with music
software - in which case they won't be using a SBPro, probably.  The amount
of RAM used by Windows (or OS/2 for that matter) isn't as big an issue with the
486 system you buy will likely be considerably cheaper than a comparable Amiga400.  Note
that I do not speak about the Amiga1200 - I don't know too much about it.

So, in a nutshell, is the Amiga1200 an A600+HD+AGA, with a 68000?

>Clones are fine for boring everyday tasks, but they cannot hold a candle to
>an Amiga when it comes to cutting edge applications.

Cutting edge applications...like what?  I see none!  Please advocate to me!! :-)
Really, I have read and posted to this group about a year now, and see no
general-purpose advantage to Amigas other than the Amiga500 (or the A600).  Beca
use of low cost.  The Video Toaster is good for TV production.  Neither of these
can make the Amiga widespread.

>Skip Sauls, Amiga Advocate
>skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu

Perhaps if Amiga4000s sold for $2300 with a multisybc and had Word and Excel on
the 300meg harddrive.... sigh.
--
Dan Stephenson                                                 das9674@usl.edu  
"There once was a Lady from Hyde/who ate some bad apples and died/but while we
lamented/the apples fermented/making cider inside her inside!" 
                        -Member of the Court, Texas Renaissance Festival  
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy