From: barham@qut.edu.au
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Amiga or Messy-DOS
Date: 19 Nov 92 14:48:31 GMT
Organization: Queensland University of Technology

etxtsg@solsta.ericsson.se (Thomas Grennefors  TX/DKF) writes:
>
> I'm considering buying a new computer. My 500 starts to feel limited and
> slow, and unreliable.

You would expect an A500 to start feeling slow - even with all its
wonderful coprocessed graphics, it's still only a 7MHz 68000
(comparable to an XT really).  It IS 1985 technology after all.
In what way is it unreliable?  I have an A1000 from 1986 and it's
still going strong!

> So the computers i considering is A3000, A4000, 386 or 486.  The
> requirements i got on my to be new computer is, colour monitor,
> 20Mhz or more HD, and it should be reliable and easy to use.

Reliable keeps popping up!

> The main arguments against the Amiga is its reability. It's not to reliable.
> Some programs work on a 500 with 1.3 but not on a 500+ or if you have extra
> chipmem and so on. Thats one of the strong points of the PC. Most (i know
> its not all) works on most machines. You can of course have requirements like
> VGA or 2M mem needed, but then again you can have these requirements on the Amiga.
> Overall the PC feels more stable than the Amiga. I'm getting tired of RW errors
> on my diskettes, gurus and plain crashes.

Ok, so you mean reliability for software?  There aren't many modern
programmes (games excluded of course) that wont run on ANY Amiga.
The same thing has happenned on PCs and Macs as new versions of the
operating system have come out.  Commodore bend over backwards to
maintain compatibilty with programmes that don't follow the rules
(too much in my opinion).  Since I've gotten 2.04 I've never found a
single programme that hasn't run!  Even Music-X (version 1.0) works
fine! Even stuff I've written works fine!  2.04 is a very "reliable"
and stable operating system.

> Another drawback of the Amiga is the future support and new
> software. This seems to be somewhat uncertain right now. One of
> the strong points of the PC is that you can be certain that you
> can get support, expansion parts and new software for a long time
> to come.

I don't think the future of the Amiga is particularly uncertain, and
by that I mean support and software.  The Amiga is finally starting
to get some of the recognition it deserves as a serious computer.
Commodore are finally telling people that Amiga's exist.  New
machines are finally showing up.  Things are just starting to look
rosy!

> The programs i use most (apart from recreational software) is word
> processing and a data base. It is much easier to find good DB or
> word processing program for the PC.

Well, you can probably find some of the BEST (in many peoples
debatable opinions) word processors and database packages for the PC,
but you can certainly easily find many GOOD (in fact, EXCELLENT) word
processors and database packages for the Amiga.  These days you can
even read your friends word perfect file (if you REALLY want to).

> Another thing to consider is the price. A 486 is about $3000 here
> in sweden. A 3000 costs about $3500 and a 4000 is somewhere around
> $4500.

Of course, the only PC you can get for less than an equivelent Amiga
is a clone... Weren't we talking about reliability as a requirement
somewhere?

> A drawback  with a PC is of course Messy-DOS and Windows.

This IS a major drawback %^)

> The good things about the amiga is of course ... come to think about it i
> cannot name one that the PC cannot match. Can anyone else do this?

The Amiga is just a damn nice, well integrated, powerful,
userfriendly machine.  A PC is just a heap of junk (even if it has a
V8)

> No flames please (but i realise that this is highly unlikely when posting
> to this group :-). Anyone that can come up with any good arguments to why i
> should stick with the Amiga. And no. Amiga is cool is not a good argument.
> Let me see if you can convince me that i should stick with the Amiga.

No flames indeed.  PC style architecture is a thing of the past
(IMHO) - Amigas are the way of the future.  Also, Amiga is cool
(sorry %^).  Seriously, though, I use a 33meg '486 at work with an
accelerated VGA card, soundblaster 16, Videodisk player and Super
Video Windows video overlay card (but only 8meg of memory and I have
to run Windows and soon Windows NT - ouch!).  At home I have a 7MHz
Amiga 2000HD with 3meg of memory and a 1081 (yes, an original)
display and guess which I prefer?  Admittedly I am longing for an
A4000 (maybe even an A1200 to get AGA on the cheap?) for that extra
burst of speed, but I would NEVER BUY A PC!

Oh, you wanted some serious, comparison, fact and figure type
reasons?  They have been bandied about here often enough, and when it
all comes done, pretty well everything the Amiga can do a PC can do
also (if you add enough hardware), but just not as nicely %^)

> Thomas Grennefors         ! What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
> Ericsson Telecom,Karlstad ! What do you mean, an African or a European swallow?
> etxtsg@solsta.ericsson.se ! Well...I don't know...AAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!

Tim.
-- 

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| t.barham@qut.edu.au (Tim Barham) - SUPER PLEB!                     |
| Applications Programmer for the Computer Based Education Section,  |
| Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Qld, Australia      |
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| "You're so open-minded that your brain leaked out..."              |
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy