From: pricec@prism.CS.ORST.EDU (price carl wayne)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: RE-MACS COST TOO MUCH (NOT!)
Date: 27 Aug 92 20:57:14 GMT
Article-I.D.: CS.1992Aug27.205714.13960
Organization: Oregon State University, Computer Science Dept.


>>Oh, be real...Perhaps you can buy an si for $2500, but that 
>>clunky machine is the equivilant of the 396SX I just got for 
>>a client for six hundred new...

>Be real yourself.  I use a 20 MHz 386 at work -- A real 386,
>not the crippleware SX version.  (There's no such thing as
>a 396, by the way.)  We paid over $7000 for the hardware and
>software.  After struggling with this machine and its miserable
>performance for over six months, we finally decided that we needed
>to spend even more money to buy accelerated graphics cards. Not to
>to do anything sophisticated like fast 32-bit graphics, mind you,
>just to run Windows.  Each of these cards cost about $600 by itself.
>I have to admit that, compared to previous performance, Windows flies
>with the new card.  At impulse power, at least.  I'd have to rate the
>performance as comparable to a Mac Classic.  The IIsi, by comparison,
>flies at warp speed.

If your company paid over $7000 for a 386, your company is not going to 
make it very long.  It sounds like a goverment agency spending thousands
on toilet seats, or my favorite, the daul purpose wrench that worked for
a couple of bolts on one type of plane only, it not only put the bolts in
it also took them out, all for over a thousand dollars each.  Everyone
working for you purchasing department should be fired.  The only exception
would be if the computer cost you very little and your using packages like
autocad that can run into the thousands.  If so, your argument is invalid,
because serious software costs the same on either side of the fence.


[Stuff deleted]

>>...and OS/2 is actully cheaper...

>Oh?  IBM is actually *paying you* to take OS/2?  Well, maybe they
>figured they'd charge what it was worth. :-)

Give OS/2 a shot, you'll realize what a good GUI and OS is.  Much nicer
than System 7 IMHO.

>>it just wastes power that could be used to
>>process the character chains that are all even boards with GUI emulating
>>clientware use...

>Fortunately, the Mac has plenty of power to "waste."  In fact, even
>the "396SX" does.  Even the fastest modems operate so slowly that the
>CPU spends most of its time just sitting around, twiddling its thumbs, 
>waiting for I/O to happen.  It seems that not only don't you know anything
>about Macs, you don't know very much about computers in general.

This was believed when the mac was developed too, but try a real OS that
can do pre-emptive multitasking, allowing you to run a number of programs
at once, using more and more of your CPU, and you won't have many CPU 
cycles wasted.  And if you had this OS on a mac, you would run into a big
problem, the CPU is chained to every little thing in the system (the new
quadras free the CPU from the SCSI and some I/O I think, an exception and
hopefully the new rule for macs).  This makes your CPU work doing things
it doesn't have to.  Why do this? Presummably to save money.  But I haven't
seen this savings passed on to the end user, have you?

>>And even on the GUI is better end...Amiga has a much better interface than
>>Mac, 

>The Amiga has better high-speed *graphics*.  The interface suffers
>from the same sort of inconsistency as Windows programs.  Every
>program has its own unique look and feel because programmers do
>their own thing.  Learning to use one program does not make it
>any easier to learn another.  (I know... who wants to use more
>than one or two programs anyway, right?)  On top of that, most
>Amiga programs I have seen, like many PC programs, display an
>excessive, frivolous, and inappropriate use of color that makes
>screens hard to read.

Try OS/2, if you have a $7000 PC, it should be capable of running OS/2
pretty well.

I have a Mac IIci, PC clone 486/33, and a unix box HP 9000/350.  The Mac
is a poor comparison even to the HP9000/350 running X-windows.  The sad
part about this is that the HP only has a 68020-16 in it.  The PC blows
them both away.  But I use the mac to make money writing and fixing up
apps for a Mac-only business.

--Carl

-- 
Carl W. Price		 	*      * Work keeps us from three evils:     * 
Computer Engineering Student	*      * boredom, vice, and need.            *
Oregon State University		*      *                                     *
pricec@prism.cs.orst.edu	*      *       ---Voltaire                   *
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc