From: ijp@doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian Palmer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Personal Computer World
Date: 7 Apr 92 12:40:09 GMT
Organization: Department of Computing, Imperial College, University of London, UK.

In article <1992Apr6.124814.11711@unix.brighton.ac.uk> rjb12@unix.brighton.ac.uk (Browning;f110or89;[05306) writes:
[ stuff about PCW deleted ]
>
>Well, this month's issue finally brought things to a head for me. In its
>blithely condescending manner PCW ticked off a *student* for remarking that
>he had made a mistake in choosing a PC rather than an Arc.
>
>So I would like to compile a document, containing appropriate comments
>from you, members of the Acorn community, and send it to PCW. If you folk
>would care to email me your points of view then I'll do my best to stick 
>them together: hopefully the effort will be worth it. PCW has a great deal
>of influence with computerate business people and I reckon they are doing
>Acorn some harm.
>
...
>
>Rich.
>

The only point in their reply (but then again they only made two
points) which I disagree with is their assumption that at some future
date software houses will stop producing products for the Archimedes,
and thus IBM PC's are a better bet.

There are two, false, assumptions here. One is that software houses
producing products for the Archimedes are growing in number (as for
PC's) and are only likely to stop if demand for products lowers -
something only Acorn can do something about (ie. better marketing
leads to greater sales of computers leads to bigger demand for
software, etc). I guess, at the moment, demand for computers from
Acorn is on the increase.

The only other condition where software houses (like CC) are likely to
drop the Archimedes are if Acorn drop it (like the BBC / Master 128).
Indeed this has already happened (as I say look at the BB micro, etc),
but has it not also happened to the origional PC's (8086 and 286's)
most PC software houses are writing software for Windows 3.# and thus
they will not work on the older PC's. This fact seems to have been
overlooked by much of the PC biased press, as has another major
factor.

The IBM PC's have always relied upon MS-DOS up until fairly recently.
An operating system which can handle upto 640k. Acorn dropped their
origional BBC operating system with the release of RiscOS 2 (although
much of it remains similar as far as OS_BYTE (etc) are the same, it is
essentilly very different). Personally I think this was a good thing
as it allowed a fresh base to be set. In the PC world they are trying
desperatly to hold onto MS-DOS with the production of Windows 3.#
which will only hold them back. I understand that they are going to
drop the MS-DOS side when it comes to Windows NT (or what ever it's
called), but that will be too late (in my view) as the business world
will have grasped Windows 3.# by then and will be reluctant to change
to NT because nothing will work (unless NT is held back to conform to
MS-DOS). This is because IBM PC's have never made a drastic jump like
the BBC micro -> Arch jump that Acorn managed.

It is my opinion that it is the PC market that is in for a bumpy ride
ahead, more so than the Acorn market as Acorn have had a good platform
for many years now (since the release of the A305) whereas the IBM
PC's platform is still (it's very sad to say :-) ) the 8086 and when
you consider that now people are still using the A305 with a much
greater specification than when released, look at the poor 8086 user
with his 640k and MS-DOS.

In summary I don't think that PCW are necessarily anti Acorn, it just
appears that they see IBM through rose coloured specticles (a bit like
your average business man who knows nothing about computers).
-- 
                            E-mail : ijp@doc.ic.ac.uk
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