rokicki@polya.Stanford.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki) (08/01/88)
Howdy, Wayne! Just today I've been having a lot of fun with my Amiga. I'm experimenting with large (ten-inch) (:-) fonts, so I'm running METAFONT in the background, along with some font conversion utilities. In the meantime, I'm reading (and now posting news), writing letters, running TeX/preview/dvips over those letters. I found a bug in one of my hack-type programs, so make is back there too. I'm also helping a novice Amiga person get up to speed by opening up a few more windows occasionally and showing him some things. I can flip between and go to any window I want just by hitting two keys, no matter what window it is. My priorities are set so that the interactive processes get the speed they need, and they respond as if they were the only things in the system. And my background tasks are purring along merrily. Of course, ARexx is smoothing all the interactions between the programs I need. When I can get this kind of environment with a Mac II, I'll buy one. But I've used the puppies, and I'm happily back to my Amiga. Don't get confused about a pile of hardware trying to be a Mac II. The B2000 was designed specifically to accept the 68020 and flicker- fixer boards; they are not hacks in any way. Rather, they are a very laudable mechanism Commodore has used to make the 2000 accessible to a wider audience. I don't want to start any more wars; I just want to say that this Amiga is the best thing I've ever used. Back to your regular programming. -tom
wayneck@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Wayne Knapp) (08/03/88)
In article <3467@polya.Stanford.EDU>, rokicki@polya.Stanford.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki) writes: > > Don't get confused about a pile of hardware trying to be a Mac II. > The B2000 was designed specifically to accept the 68020 and flicker- > fixer boards; they are not hacks in any way. Rather, they are a > very laudable mechanism Commodore has used to make the 2000 accessible > to a wider audience. > You are right. I don't really mean that these 68020 and flicker-fixer boards are bad designs or poor solutions for the people that want them. In fact I'm all for slots and boards. The point that you can buy a LOT of Amiga hardware for the price of a Mac II is well taken. Thank you for pointing that out. Still I really feel that the average joe looking for a Mac II level system won't know or will be scared away by what one has to do to bring the B2000 up to the 68020 system. So I still think that the point is valid that there is a new high end system that is needed to keep the Amiga in the running and upto date. Maybe even just a B2000 with the cards already pluged in, but it has to clean and simple if it is going to give the Mac II a run for its money. Making the guy do the plugging himself is the kludge, not the hardware itself. I wasn't clear on that before. I really like the Amiga. (true I don't love it) I'm still waiting to see if it is going to really fly for the long term. It looks great now, but so did Atari St a couple years ago. As Amiga owners it is too easy to believe that the rest of the world knows what we know. I bet a awful lot of Mac buyers have no idea what can be done with an Amiga. Where can you hear about Amiga other then Amiga groups and rags? So if the solution involves much knowledge at all I think a large number of sales are already lost. I don't think very many potential Amiga owners have net access. Wayne Knapp