From: dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: MS's misconduct!
Date: 5 Oct 92 16:42:47 GMT
Organization: New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, N.J.

In article <1992Sep27.050408.12169@nosc.mil> discar@nosc.mil (Joe Discar) writes:
>In article <1992Sep25.200526.11598@njitgw.njit.edu> dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap) writes:
>>
>>Your needs vs. mine.  I can't afford mutiple computers.  Apparantly,
>>you have them lying around doing nothing anyway, so it's not a
>>problem. 
>
>Poor you.  But the point is, that there are better solutions in some
>instances.  Even so, downloading in the background is not a very
>popular/critical thing for most people anyway.

Sure.  The ideal solution to any problem is to throw more money at it.
It isn't always possible.  But I'm just not a loaded as you are.
Guess what?  Us poor folk don't like waiting for downloads, either.

>>But I can create a spreadsheet while my 30 page term paper is
>>printing.  No task switcher can do this.
>
>First, one does not write a thirty page term paper every day (or even
>every month).  Second, if *I* just finished writing a 30 page term paper,
>the least of my desires is to crank open a spreadsheet--the thing on my
>mind would be... Pizza (or sleep)!)!

Ok well.  You seem to think that everybody works like you do.
1) It's enough that I write such a paper every couple of months.  It's
   worth it if I don't have to give up the computer whenever I print
   such a file.
2) *I* don't write 30-page papers in one sitting.  Writing such a
   paper is a rather long process, and I do other things (like sleep)
   in the meantime.  When I go to print, the document was usually
   completed the night before (I can't print at night, because it
   wakes up the family) and I don't want to waste valuable morning
   time waiting for the printer to output 30 pages.  While the
   document is printing, I can pop up Excel and input new data tha I
   must keep current (like savings account transactions and my car's
   gas mileage data - yes, I use Excel for this, I have been for the
   last three years, now.)
3) Why can't you eat pizza while using a spreadsheet?

>No, I'm talking about as a benefit for the PC industry.  The long range
>benefit of multitasking isn't "printing in the background"--heck a $49
>printer buffer is probably more useful than that (and even DOS can
>print in the background!).

Until your document overflows the 64K print buffer.  Those 10MB
documents (most things with a lot of graphics) sort of make $49 print
buffers quite useless.  And the DOS Print command does nothing for
stuff you print from applications.

>The benefit is that programmers will have a new way of solving
>problems--which will result in programs that are an order of
>magnitude "more complex" than current public domain solutions...

Who said it wouldn't.  This is ALREADY HAPPENING in academics.  It's a
big research item.  But you seem to think that all other uses are a
waste of time and effort.

-- 
David Charlap         |"there aren't 50,000 things for which it's worth writing
dic5340@hertz.njit.edu| software; and the computer industry doesn't have enough
----------------------+ programmers to create that much good software.
Therefore, most of it must be worthless" -- Boris Beizer "The Frozen Keyboard"
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy