From: melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger)
Subject: Re: NeXT WP grips (was Really Misleading Subject)
Organization: Penn State Computer Science
	<ae4Ht_ek6@cs.psu.edu> <id.I3RO.I0L@ferranti.com>
	<1992Apr12.180723.4076@news.rn.com>
	<EIGENSTR.92Apr12134437@nyssa.cs.rose-hulman.edu>
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 02:36:37 GMT


In article <EIGENSTR.92Apr12134437@nyssa.cs.rose-hulman.edu> eigenstr@nyssa.cs.rose-hulman.edu (Todd R. Eigenschink) writes:

   WordPerfect for the NeXT ISN'T, as far as I'm concerned.  Not only is
   it monolithic and severely lacking in funcionality (why didn't they
   port 5.1 instead of whatever they _did_ port?????), it's
   SSSSSLLLLLOOOOOWWWWW!  Nothing like a 64040 box that runs WP slower
   than a 8088 runs just about anything...

They ported 5.0.  What other features besides tables and equation
editing are missing?  From what I've seen of Word Perfect it wasn't
slow.  Dragging images around on the screen and watching text rewrap
around it was fast.  No one that I know of has complained.  What
exactly did you find to be slow?

   And WriteNow...please.  NeXT doesn't even support it anymore.  Doesn't
   that tell you something?  It was/is consistent, at least--it'll crash
   about every 10 minutes for me.

Hmmm.  Sounds like you are a bit clueless.  NeXT doesn't give WriteNow
away free anymore.  AppSoft will sell it to you for $200 though.  I
haven't used WriteNow that much but somehow I get the feeling that you
are exaggerating

   ...and who said that the NeXT was Unix-based?  Nonononono...it runs
   Mach...and Mach most definitely is NOT Unix.

You are most definitely clueless.  BSD 4.3 is indeed running on top of
Mach.  Most people will never know the difference.

   (Conversation overheard between two profs, one from our school and one
   from a different one:

   Theirs: What do you teach your introductory courses with?
   Ours: Pascal on the NeXT.
   Theirs: NeXT...is that Unix?
   Ours: No...it's Mach.
   )

   The same prof also claims (and many students agree with him) that we
   have only 4 types of machines on campus:

   1. A VAX running VMS and various other kinds of DEC hardware.  This
      needs no further description, does it? :-)
   2. Toasters.  One lab full of Zenith 386 PeeCee's.  It's unfortunate
      that they even have to get ranked with actual computers, but...
   3. Pseudo-toasters.  Somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 NeXT
      machines.  They're considered to have infested our otherwise pleasant
      campus.
   4. Real computers.  A still-growing lab of Sun hardware.  Perhaps this
      classification was a bit biased, since he's a CS prof and this lab is
      run by the comp. sci. dept, but still...


   Oh, yeah...and this week's issue of the school paper had a cartoon
   showing a NeXT with an airbag popping out of the monitor.  The caption
   said "Some said the NeXT's 'crash protection' went a bit too far."  I
   wonder if one of those things would survive a drop from the top of
   Moench hall?  (heh heh heh :)

So, what are we suppose to conclude?  Most people at your school don't
understand much about computers, or they're devout Sun weenies?

-Mike

Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.sysv386