From: x90wardell@gw.wmich.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Oh my God!  Help my friend not buy an IBM!
Date: 11 Nov 92 12:32:59 EST
Organization: Western Michigan University

In article <1992Nov11.112204.11012@mercury.unt.edu>, west@ponder.csci.unt.edu (Bruce West) writes:
> In article <1992Nov10.110930.6270@gw.wmich.edu> x90wardell@gw.wmich.edu writes:
>    [major stuff deleted...about how IBM beat Amiga in all this stuff]
>>of sound and graphics and animation.  Maybe eventually I will meet someone
>                                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>who has an Amiga 3000 with animation that will make my head turn, but
>  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>I am not going to hold my breath.
> 
>     The above is where all these arguments come from.  The Amiga users, MANY
> of whom have A3000s, have used 386s and 486s extensively in either their
> school or workplace.  The IBM arguers havn't really seen what they are
> missing.  This guy has never even touched a decked A3000?!?!  Much less
> an A4000.  No wonder he has an IBM - I can tell he really researched his
> choice of computers.

	Listen, I will try to put it in simple terms so that you do not
get confused.  I said I had not seen an Amiga 3000 that had animation
that would blow me away.  I have used plenty of Amiga 3000s.  I had an
Amiga.  I had an Amiga until I found that I needed a real comptuer to get
some real work done.  The Amiga was good for playing video games on or
using some of the lamo word processors for it for somall papers.  But
when college came, I needed a computer that had some engineering software
like IPLS for coding intel chips and Altara for coding chips and an
easily accessible version of spice (the Amiga version sucks).  for your
information, I work at a company that sells IBMs and sells Amiga hardware
(hard drives, ks20 chips, etc.) I haven't seen an Amiga 4000, I admit it
but it wasn't out when moved to the PC platform but it still doesn't
change the fact that there is very little software for the Amiga and
getting it is often an ordeal.  Throw away your pirated stuff for a moment
and tell me how much software you would really have?  
	
	Furthermore, I needed bulletproof software and my IBM compatible
PRE-EMPTIVELY multitasks in a protected Os unlike the Amiga which is
not only protected but a great deal of the software actually takes over.
For doing 3d modeling, I need to be able to do in in the background such
that I can still be doing my program compiling and other tasks at near
full speed.  The Amiga 3000 just doesn't do that as well.  And, as I said, the
4000 wasn't available at the time.  You accuse me of not researching
my computer, and then make ignorant statements like "PCs can't preemptively
multitask -- period."  Try os/2 2.0.


>     I carefully researched my choice of computers and am not a mindless
> Amiga follower.  But I will say Mac went out the window right away - an
> OS in which you can't type, 'nuff said.  And IBM simply couldn't measure
> up.  I'm a CS student with a serious interest in graphics.  With my Amiga
> I can enjoy a cheap, fast, multitasking environment with some nice base
> graphics and sound and great multimedia and presentation software.  Awesome
> support for programmers.  And if I ever get into real serious graphics I can
> get a card to make my Amiga look like an Silicon Graphics Iris - or if I
> get into the video end I can get a toaster for about the same price.  Now
> THAT is what I call open options - *and* being happy along the way.
> 
	Then you made the right choice.  The Amiga is BETTER for doing
graphics cheaply than a PC.  A 7mhz amiga can do graphics animation as
well as a high end IBM PC and the Amiga costs less.  
	I too needed a good programming environment and OS/2 provided
it but I also needed easy access to chip encoding programmers, altara,
ipls, and 2d/3d modeling.
	
	You and I faces similar decisions.  I had an amiga first.  I
got an Amiga 1000 when they were first introduced (just called the Amiga
then).  Eventually sold it for an Amiga 2000.  Why Amiga then?  Because
PCs were crap back then.  You know it, I know it, they had lame graphics,
slow processing, and ms-dos was the only choice.  But times change, my
Amiga 2000 was fairly well decked up, workbench 2.0 rom, was on running
work bench 2.0.  had wb set up really neatly, etc.  But getting software
that I needed was getting more and more difficult and it was getting
to be a very slow comptuer compared to the ibms out there.  My chocies
were the Mac (yea right!), an Amiga 3000 which at the time cost an awful
lot and only gave me a 50 meg hard drive + the 49 meg I already had which
half the software didn't use, and the Amiga 3000 wasn't fully compatible.
Not to mention the software deficit was still there.  Or I could move
to a PC.  So I got a 386 with windows and was marginally happy with it
but missed the multitasking.  A few months later, I put in a 486
motherboard and 16 megs of memory and a 24bit coprocessed grahics card
and now I am very happy with it (now that I have os/2).

	So I wouldn't exactly chime that I didn't think about my hardware
platforms.

						-Brad



>>
>>							-Brad
> 
> Ciao...
> 
> 
> 
>                                                            - Jason
>