Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Date: Wed,  9 Sep 1992 15:49:35 -0400 
From: Stefan Monnier <sm86+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Is Falcon worth buying????
	<1992Sep9.151745.18833@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>

Excerpts from netnews.comp.sys.atari.st: 9-Sep-92 Re: Is Falcon worth
buying???? Your Conscience@magnus.a (2425)

> Well, I've sat down and used OS/2 here in the lab, and, while it is, in some 
> ways, better than Windows, my opinion of both the products is still very poor. 
> I mean, OS/2 takes 30 MEGS of hard drive if you install everything, and that 
> does not include the swap file! Go to an OS/2 machine, move the mouse and drag 
> a window, feels about as fast as your 8mhz ST doesn't it? Amazing, it's running
> on a 486 50mhz... Did you notice that when you dragged the window you 
> (probably) had hard-drive access... just to move a window! At least, the 8 meg 
> machine we use will often use the swap file for this simple thing. And talk 
> about speed, I've seen Multi-Tos at work, and it was way-the-hell faster than 
> OS/2 (and running on a 68000 at 16mhz, I know that supposedly it is not 
> *supposed* to run on the 68000, but this version did!).

> I don't know what it is, but operating systems like OS/2, that take *humerous* 
> amounts of hard disk and ram, and *still* operate slowly, don't seem like the 
> wave of the future to me... I thought System 7 on the Mac was a hog, compared 
> to OS/2 it's, it's, well, it's sure more streamlined that OS/2!

> OS/2 works no magic, it is huge and cumbersome and slow, just another case of 
> the big guns trying to play catch up... and failing.

> It does look neat though! And the multitasking is a far-cry better than 
> windows, and and and...
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------->
> |-) -David Butler- dhbutler@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu

> - who now has a shorter .sig file due to complaints...

>   |||        - FRANK ZAPPA for president! "One of his best qualifications is
>  / | \         that at least he won't take it seriously." - Jammer

Well, OS/2 is about as big and as complex as Unix. The problem with them
is that they are a bit too powerful (in their functionality) to work
on small machines. Their main memory is the HD and the RAM is only
a cache. So you need a fast drive and a large RAM: 16MB seems to be a
normal 'minimum' !

Sure MultiTOS (which IS supposed to work on 68000) is faster. 
But does it have virtual memory ? network support ? etc..

Just try to run a text only programm on any unix or OS/ machine: it
may be slower than MultiTOS but not as slow as it seems to be for
graphics. In fact, the problem is not slowness, it's responsiveness !

And it is much more difficult to get when dealing with a high level 
operating system !
Here, at CMU, we have that nice AFS which permits to access remote 
hosts transparently (any other AFS site: no need to ftp). That's
nice, but that adds a LOT of overhead !
It's the price of power !

I love my old ST: so simple, so direct !
And my Unix account: such a big screen, such power, no problems
about multitasking, memory limits, etc. I can run a program on another
machine, etc...
I do have access to multitasking on ST (I always use it) but not VM, 
remote execution (with X server, ..), ...

It's just not the same thing !

	Stefan Monnier

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