From: pss1@kepler.unh.edu (Paul S Secinaro)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Oh my God! Help my friend not buy an IBM!
Date: 13 Nov 1992 13:23:28 GMT
Organization: University of New Hampshire  -  Durham, NH
NNTP-Posting-Host: kepler.unh.edu

In article <1992Nov12.181430.4533@TorreyPinesCA.ncr.com> jgrimm@TorreyPinesCA.ncr.com (Jeffrey Grimmett 9999) writes:

>First of all, quite a fair comparison.  Let's pit a 66 Mhz machine against
>a 16 or 25 MegaHertz machine.  Oh, very good!

Here we go again... :)  Any comparison in the same price range is fair.

>To get that 486 up to par with a 3000/16, however, you need to add a few items
>that most buyers demand.

>First, a multitasking operating system is a must.  It's a bit much to expect
>someone to wait for the CPU to finish its assigned task before you can move on
>to the next.  TSR's are such a drag...
>
>What choice do you have?  Well, Winders NT ("Not Today...") or OS/2 2.0 are
>the only good choices I have seen so far.  Well, Winders comes on a CDRom,
>if it ever comes out at all (NT that is), so throw the cost of a CDRom in
>there.

From what I hear, the final release version will be available on
floppies as well as CD-ROM.  The current version is a pre-beta
development kit which has tons of stuff that will not be in the end
user version.  In any event, I don't think we need to worry about NT
for a while.  It's still a ways from release.

>Both OS's are huge compared to ADOS 2.x's 5-6 disk distribution, so reserve
>around 20 megs of precious hard drive space for your OS.  Oh... buy memory.
>LOTS of memory.  Hope those tarrifs aren't hitting you folks in Finland too
>hard yet....

Disk space is only a problem if you are trying to upgrade an older
system that might have a small hard disk.  Most clones today come with
at least 100MB, usually more like 200MB+, so this isn't a big issue.

  As for DRAM, we'll have to see what happens - it could be a problem.
Personally, I don't think the current price increases will last long.

>Mouse card and driver.  Not too costly but every penny counts...

Come on now, lets be realistic.  How hard is it to find a clone that
comes bundled with a mouse?

>Video card.  Need one with a blitter so you can get those snappy
>screen refreshes and maybe design some nice MultiMedia animations on
>it.  Oh, a blitter isn't necessary but it's needed to compensate for
>the 486's lack of one.

In that case, an '040 card is needed to compensate for the A3000's
lack of one.  If you can claim that raw CPU isn't everything, then I
can certainly claim that multimedia animations aren't everything
either.

And again, one only needs to pick up an issue of Computer Shopper to
see how many clones these days come bundled with coprocessed and/or
local-bus graphics cards.  These days, a 24-bit coprocessed graphics
card doesn't cost much more than a good SVGA card.

>After adding all of the extras required, I wonder if maybe that 486 doesn't
>cost sufficiently more than a 4000, which has superior graphics capabilities.
>Oh, and wanna add a sound blaster or something to get the audio in line with
>the base A500?  Thank you.

You're right, it doesn't cost sufficiently more than an A4000.  It
probably costs about the same.  It also has superior graphics if you
happen to need true 24-bit color and/or 1280x1024 non-interlaced video
(though not at the same time).  I strongly recommend that you check
the latest ads, especially the Gateway 2000 ads.

Paul
-- 
Paul Secinaro
pss1@kepler.unh.edu
Synthetic Vision and Pattern Analysis Laboratory
UNH Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering