From: pooler@aix02.ecs.rpi.edu (Robert Peter Poole)
Subject: Re: 4000:  Is it so great?
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 02:47:56 GMT


-- Quoted article follows --
Do you ever wonder why the Amiga has always offered hardware options to allow
it to emulate a PC, while the IBM has never had this option for their machines?
The answer is because the IBM is a better machine than the Amiga.  Commodore
is now releasing their new 4000, claiming its so great.  Well, right now you
can buy a 486 DX 50 MHz PC for under $3000 with 24 bit color.  Or a 66 MHz for
about the same price.  All this plus incredible third party support and a user
base that makes the Amiga's look like Downhome, USA compared to New York City.
Another big thing in the Amiga community is its multitasking.  Well, OS/2 has
been out for the IBM for a while now, and Desqview even longer.  It seems to me
that CBM is trying to just catch up to the high echelon that the IBM is
currently residing at.  I used to own an Amiga, so I know what I'm talking
about, and when I say the Amiga crashes inking "Whats all the fuss
about?"  Seriously folks, face the facts:  The Amiga is still a couple of steps
back on the evolution scale, and just losing ground.
-- End of quoted article --

And today, boys and girls, we are going to learn the word *flame bait*.

People, this guy either posted this article because he is incredibly stupid,
because he derives perverse pleasure from making irritating remarks and seeing
the kinds of reactions he gets, or because he is insecure about his choice of
operating platform and wants to prove to himself that he is right by being
confrontational.  This is similar to the mentality of a frat brother who
gay bashes.  (I'm not implying that all frat brothers do, as I know many
brothers who are decent people, but I've seen my share of frat boys with
severe problems, mostly stemming from confusion over their own sexuality.)

But I digress...

Anybody with a high school education can poke holes in some of the arguments
this person put forth.  And a computer science grad student like myself could
argue until he's blue in the face with a total computer neophyte, which I
suspect this person is, and not get anywhere.  Clearly, the human race is
damned to suffer the stupidity of some of its members.  However, we can do
some things to minimize the pain.

I own an Amiga 3000 running Amigados 2.04.  I can say with great certainty
that my machine is much more stable than a 486 system running OS/2.  Comparing
Workbench to Desqview is a joke -- Desqview's interface is crap, and the
company never DID do anything with Desqview X.  I had to write software under
OS/2 all summer long (it was DOS software, but I liked working in the OS/2
environment because it multitasked tolerably well).  OS/2 would be nice if
that were the ONLY OS that ran on 80x86 machines.  Unfortunately, MS-DOS
exists, and a lot of hardware is designed for machines running MS-DOS.  You
see, OS/2 is kind of picky about sharing interrupts whereas MS-DOS is not.
The result?  Most third party expansion boards won't run correctly under
OS/2, and setting up something as simple as a multi-line BBS under OS/2 is
a royal pain in the ass because it can't reliably be done yet.  For all its
vaunted stability, OS/2 is not crashproof.  I managed to crash it running
simple character based MS-DOS applications.  There was often no rhyme or reason
to the crashes.

While it's true that older versions (read: pre 2.0) of Amigados had problems,
the new version is a programmer's dream.  What's more, its stability is better
than a lot of UNIX systems.  And I don't have to worry about IBM and
Microsoft duking it out over whose OS is going to reside on my machine.

IBM-clone graphics options are still terribly limited.  Only recently has
local bus become an option, but even so, OS/2 still doesn't have a 32-bit
graphics engine.  It will, but think -- Amiga had the equivalent of local-bus
from day one, and the Amiga 4000 (which has to have been in testing for
at least a year if ADPRO supposedly supports the new chipset) has the 32 bit
graphics chips and enhanced graphics capabilities to take the machine into
the 90's.  256,000 colors is more than most users will be able to
distinguish, especially in animated sequences (which is, after all, where the
Amiga shines), making the Amiga 4000 and other AA machines extremely
competitive with Mac-IIs running color quickdraw.

I've heard some people complain about color banding even on 24-bit systems,
but most graphics professionals will tell you that that is the result of poor
coding, not poor hardware.

The Amiga is also a computer scientist's dream because it encourages good
programming habits, European demo writers notwithstanding.  PC users continue
to write code and use code with primitive busy-waiting and inelegant
resource-hogging, inefficient code.

The bit about the IBM emulators on the Amiga makes me laugh.  IBM emulators
exist on the Mac and on the NeXT, and can often get comparable results to
the actual machines themselves.  The same holds true for IBM emulators on
the Amiga.  Does this mean that IBM clones are superior to EVERY machine
that emulators exist for?  Not at all.  We all know there's a huge installed
base of MS-DOS software, and a lot of people are reluctant to switch from
their old way of doing things.  Emulators smooth the upgrade path.

I used to be a 286 user who hated Amigas because they were "game machines,"
not worth a serious programmer's time.  When I got shafted by the Intel-based
industry six months after my purchase, I took a hard look at the situation.
I traded my 286 for an Amiga 500 (yes, you read that right) and was immediately
struck by how much smoother the multitasking on a 68000 was than on my 286.
(Just for comparison, I have an undergraduate friend who claims that his
8 MHz 68000 Macintosh can still outperform a 486 doing certain tasks, which
doesn't surprise me.)  I upgraded to the 3000 when I could, and honestly, I
don't feel shafted in the slightest knowing that the new chipset is available
in the Amiga 4000.  Why?  Because I know I have an upgrade path, and I know my
machine is not obsolescent because some chip manufacturer suddenly decided it
was time...

(I almost bought a NeXT station but ultimately decided that the Mach kernal
sucks rocks, and the color options just weren't that appealing on that
platform.)

Rob Poole
pooler@rpi.edu
pooler@cs.rpi.edu