ephraim@wang.UUCP (pri=8 Ephraim Vishniac x76659 ms1459) (08/19/86)
On Saturday, I went to the MacWorld show at the Bayside Expo Center in Boston (well, Dorchester, but who's counting?). I was impressed. I wasn't impressed by the hordes of undistinguished disk drives (internal and external, hard disks and floppies) or the flood of drawing software. I wasn't even as impressed as I thought I would be by the speedup boards, such as Levco's Prodigy 4. I certainly wasn't impressed with memory expansion kits. But I was completely blown away by *large screens.* E-Machines (7945 S.W. Mohawk St., Tualatin, Oregon 97062, 503-692-6656) was demonstrating a 1024x808 pixel 17" screen. $1595 show price (until October 31, with coupon), $1995 otherwise. Another company, whose name escapes me, was showing a similar product for about $2995. (They're mentioned in the September MacWorld. Extra price is due to greater modularity, choice of output signals, ...) The "Big Picture" (E-Machines' product) consists of a monitor, cabling (runs through security slot), and a clip-on piggyback board. The board contains 128K of high-speed RAM so that CPU access to video memory is full speed, not delayed by interleaving. They claim about 20% improvement in drawing speed. You also get a set of INITs which make the system switch from the normal screen over to theirs during bootup. To run without their screen, just boot from an unmodified system. Their patches include hooks to over-ride brain-damaged programs that have the standard Mac screen size hard-coded. If you hold the option key while growing a window, their patch replaces the program-supplied bounds with the real screen bounds. So, even recalcitrant programs can be coaxed to produce more-than-full-page windows. You can read more than a page in MacWrite, 132 columns in MacTerminal, huge areas in MacDraw. I didn't see FullPaint on this screen, but I imagine it's worth seeing. For the truly extravagant, it's worth noting that the Big Picture is Prodigy 4 compatible. Let's see: Prodigy 4 = $6995, Big Picture = $1595 (show price), Mac Plus = $1299 (developer's price). So, for less than $10K, you could blow your mind completely. Oh, but you'd probably want a SCSI disk or two... Downside: The folks at E-Machines' booth did not know of any debugger which handles non-standard screens correctly. The next release of TMON is supposed to. Macsbug works until the first debugger screen is full, then it blows the scrolling. Ephraim Vishniac decvax!wanginst!wang!ephraim Disclaimer: I have no business connection with Levco, E-Machines, or MacWorld, although I fervently hope to become a customer of E-Machines.
mrl@oddjob.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson) (08/22/86)
>For the truly extravagant, it's worth noting that the Big Picture is >Prodigy 4 compatible. Let's see: Prodigy 4 = $6995, Big Picture = $1595 >(show price), Mac Plus = $1299 (developer's price). So, for less than $10K, >you could blow your mind completely. Oh, but you'd probably want a SCSI disk >or two... How much for a 70MB disk? A couple thousand, I'd guess. And a backup tape drive? Another grand. Sounds like you're talking $13K-$14K. For that price, you could get a standalone Sun Workstation.... -- * * * Scott Anderson * * * * uucp: ihnp4!oddjob!kaos!sra * * ** arpa: oddjob!kaos!sra@lbl-csam * * * * * * * * bitnet: sra%kaos@UChicago * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
naftoli@aecom.UUCP (Robert N. Berlinger) (08/25/86)
> But I was completely blown away by *large screens.*
I think everyone is, but the question is do we want to spend
~$2000 for something that could be very cheap once the open Mac comes
out? To me, the price seems artificially high because of the fact
that "we've got no other choice". Would a "similar" monitor with the
same resolution and graphics card cost as much for an IBM PC (not to say
that they are comparable!)?
Are we getting ripped off, or is the dollars per pixel ratio good?
--
Robert Berlinger
Systems Analyst
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
UUCP: ...{philabs,cucard,pegasus,ihnp4,rocky2}!aecom!naftoli
Compuserve: 73047,741jimb@amdcad.UUCP (Jim Budler) (08/27/86)
In article <444@aecom.UUCP> naftoli@aecom.UUCP (Robert N. Berlinger) writes: >> But I was completely blown away by *large screens.* > >I think everyone is, but the question is do we want to spend >~$2000 for something that could be very cheap once the open Mac comes >out? To me, the price seems artificially high because of the fact >that "we've got no other choice". Would a "similar" monitor with the >same resolution and graphics card cost as much for an IBM PC (not to say >that they are comparable!)? > >Are we getting ripped off, or is the dollars per pixel ratio good? >-- Opinion: We are not getting ripped off. The dollar per pixel ratio is good, by 'present' standards. A previous response to the same article said approx.: ' Why not by a Sun standalone for approx. the same amount' implying the Sun standalone was better. That's a valid implication for some users, but not for others. You can't run Macintosh software on a Sun. I wish we had more options, say: 1. 72x72 9 inch (standard Macintosh) 2. 72x72 12 inch ~$200 - $500 3. Something in between ~$1000 4. The $2000 high resolution, large monitors. All of the above may be available with the 'Open Mac' but I bet it will cost me more to replace my Mac with an 'Open Mac' than to add features. As always I will make THAT choice when necessary, not on advance speculation. If I had a commercial application running on a Mac, say that Mac-Apollo connection, I'd welcome the $2000 large, high pixel screen, and I'd guess the users/developers are jumping. Me, I'm waiting. But I'm not feeling ripped off. I've priced machines which give the same ability the Prodigy + Mac + large screen provides. And $13000 Sun vs. $11000 Mac + Prodigy + Screen comes down to: "Unix + Unix applications vs. Mac + Mac applications" not "$11000 vs. $13000" Each buyer must make his own choice. P.S. I love Unix and use it where it fits. I love my Mac, and use it where it fits. I would love to use one machine for both. I can't. I feel frustrated, but not ripped off. -- Jim Budler Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (408) 749-5806 Usenet: {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra,intelca}!amdcad!jimb Compuserve: 72415,1200 Once and for all: I like my Macintosh
tecot@apple.UUCP (Ed Tecot) (08/28/86)
In article <1466@oddjob.UUCP> mrl@oddjob.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson) writes: >>For the truly extravagant, it's worth noting that the Big Picture is >>Prodigy 4 compatible. Let's see: Prodigy 4 = $6995, Big Picture = $1595 >>(show price), Mac Plus = $1299 (developer's price). So, for less than $10K, >>you could blow your mind completely. Oh, but you'd probably want a SCSI disk >>or two... >How much for a 70MB disk? A couple thousand, I'd guess. And a backup >tape drive? Another grand. Sounds like you're talking $13K-$14K. >For that price, you could get a standalone Sun Workstation.... Yes, but I'd rather have the Prodigy 4 - it can run circles around a Sun. (You may think I'm joking, but benchmarks here show the Prodigy 4 as being faster than any workstation to date; about 1/3 the MIPS of a Cray 1-S) Of course I have yet to see UltraRogue for the Mac :-) _emt
mrl@oddjob.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson) (09/05/86)
In article <146@apple.UUCP> tecot@apple.UUCP (Ed Tecot) writes: >In article <1466@oddjob.UUCP> mrl@oddjob.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson) writes: >>>For the truly extravagant, it's worth noting that the Big Picture is >>>Prodigy 4 compatible. Let's see: Prodigy 4 = $6995, Big Picture = $1595 >>>(show price), Mac Plus = $1299 (developer's price). So, for less than $10K, >>>you could blow your mind completely. Oh, but you'd probably want a SCSI disk >>>or two... >>How much for a 70MB disk? A couple thousand, I'd guess. And a backup >>tape drive? Another grand. Sounds like you're talking $13K-$14K. >>For that price, you could get a standalone Sun Workstation.... >Yes, but I'd rather have the Prodigy 4 - it can run circles around a Sun. >(You may think I'm joking, but benchmarks here show the Prodigy 4 as >being faster than any workstation to date; about 1/3 the MIPS of a Cray 1-S) Not joking, but a little behind the times, I suspect. You are probably talking about a Sun-2, which was a ~0.5 MIPS machine. Sun doesn't even make those anymore. The Sun-3 has the same CPU/coprocessor as the Prodigy 4, a 16MHz 68020/68881, so they are both ~2 MIPS machines. (Given that the Cray 1-S is ~80 MIPS, the 1/3 figure is approximately correct). >Of course I have yet to see UltraRogue for the Mac :-) As someone else pointed out, this may be the important difference; there is a huge base of software for UNIX machines, and Suns have one of the most faithful BSD implementations around. It will be a long time before the Mac catches up (unless, of course, it goes UNIX, too :-). One thing to consider, though, is that commercial software for Suns is typically an order of magnitude more expensive than Mac software (the result of larger budgets, I'm sure; this is known as the IBM-PC syndrome). It is also less likely to take advantage of the Sun window system, as it can lean on the underlying UNIX. My feeling is that the above Mac configuration would only be worth it if you already had a heavy investment in Mac software, and really needed the extra power (although if you needed that power in the first place, you probably wouldn't have gotten a Macintosh). This was even more true before Levco lowered their prices; I laughed when I first saw them. Anyway, this whole discussion seems a little premature, given that we were just comparing Macs and Amigas :-). -- * * * Scott Anderson * * * * uucp: ihnp4!oddjob!kaos!sra * * ** arpa: oddjob!kaos!sra@lbl-csam * * * * * * * * bitnet: sra%kaos@UChicago * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
mrl@oddjob.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson) (09/05/86)
In article <1467@oddjob.UUCP> I write: >>Of course I have yet to see UltraRogue for the Mac :-) > >As someone else pointed out, this may be the important difference; there >is a huge base of software for UNIX machines, and Suns have one of the >most faithful BSD implementations around. It will be a long time before >the Mac catches up (unless, of course, it goes UNIX, too :-). One thing >to consider, though, is that commercial software for Suns is typically >an order of magnitude more expensive than Mac software (the result of >larger budgets, I'm sure; this is known as the IBM-PC syndrome). It >is also less likely to take advantage of the Sun window system, as it >can lean on the underlying UNIX. One other point that bears being made explicit: the price of a Sun includes a complete set of Berkeley UNIX software. This includes editors, troff, C, Fortran, Pascal... Nowadays, you even have to pay extra to get MacWrite for a Macintosh. -- * * * Scott Anderson * * * * uucp: ihnp4!oddjob!kaos!sra * * ** arpa: oddjob!kaos!sra@lbl-csam * * * * * * * * bitnet: sra%kaos@UChicago * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *