andrzej@bcars268.UUCP (Andrzej Bieszczad) (08/25/90)
Several days ago I posted some complains against ST-80 for Windows 3.
There are some notes which I sent to lchen@ubc-cs as a reply to
his request. I am not sure whether he received it, and besides, I thought
that more Smalltalk-windowers would be interested.
----
I played with ST-80 several evenings, and I think that one can live
with it. The most annoying is the start-up time, but it is impossible
to overcome.
I was complaining, because I did not notice that my TURBO button was
pushed in, and the machine was running with 8MHz clock. When I switched
it to 25MHz, it was big improvement (as one could expect).
That problem forced me to look for all other possibilities, and finally
I have SmartDrive with 2048 512 (the second number is important for windows
as you probably know), 6MB swap file and hard disk treated by PCTools'
compress (or something like that). As long as an entity (object, method,
widget) resides in one of ST-80's caches, the system is fast; otherwise
it takes a little longer, but it is acceptable. One has to remeber to hold
a button a little longer than it would be expected (since it is difficult
to predict whether the entity is in the cache).
I measured some execution times, and if a method is in the native cache
it outperforms MAC (about 3.5 times). When it has to be compiled to the
cache, it is a little bit less than two-fold slower. My MAC (well, it
is BNR's) has 5MB of RAM, co-processor and fast hard disk.
I like ST-80 very much. I like Windows 3. If compared with MAC, I have the
same (I would say MORE, but is is subjective) for half the price. What
is also important to me, I have portability with any ST-80 platform, so
I can run my stuff on MACs at Carleton University, since nobody other
there likes PCs, and I want my degree.
The bottom line: I am satisfied with ST-80 (though I wish I could buy
another 4MB of RAM).
Andrzej
PS. I still have a MAC logo on my car, but I will buy a Windows3 one
for the next car.
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Andrzej Bieszczad (Bell-Northern Research, Ltd.)
USENET: uunet!bnrgate!bigsur!andrzej
BitNet: andrzej@BNR.CA
Surface: Dept. 7G12, P.O. Box 3511, Station C, Phone: (613) 763-2259
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1Y 4H7 Fax: (613) 763-3283
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