ali@polya.Stanford.EDU (Ali T. Ozer) (05/25/88)
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As always, from the end of his column. Reprinted without permission,
vol 13, no 6 of Byte:
... Once again I'm out of space, and I haven't got started good. One thing
I simply *have* to talk about next time is the Amiga 2000, which can
be a highly frustrating machine. The disk access is slow. It bombs far
more often than it ought to. The PC part of it is plain vanilla, and
because of the way Commodore chose to let the Amiga half-communicate
with the PC, very few add-on PC boards will work. For all that, the
Amiga 2000 has a prominent place here, because it's just plain *fun*
(if frustrating). ...
Oh well, he just can't let a column go without saying at least one
negative thing about the Amiga. This month there are also two pro-Amiga
letters in his "Chaos Minor Mail," to which he comes up with the most
unknowledgable replies. ("...PC-ditto [the PC emulator for the ST] is
quite slow, about 80% as fast as a PC, while the Amiga 2000 is exactly the
speed of a PC..." Oh, yeah, right, and that speed difference is the only
differentiating factor...)
Ali Ozer, ali@polya.stanford.eduwtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) (05/30/88)
Well, J.P. did sort of give the Amiga a left-handed (yes, I'm left handed myself) comment after he finished knocking it. He said that the Amiga is worth buying just to be able to run "Math Aquarium" or whatever it is called. Jerry Pournelle's column in theroy mirrors a neophyte's view of computing and computing equipment. Unfortunately, that means that Pournelle's column is sometimes filled with semi-factual information. Basically, the column is based on Pournelle's impressions as a user, rather than the real technical (or lack of) merits of the things he mentions. Don't forget that Pournelle spent several years telling us that first Pascal and then Modula II were the salvations of the computer language world. .. and then two months ago Pournelle informs us that he arragned to have his wife's reading instruction program for the Atari ST coded in (ta-da) BASIC! And then Dr. Pournelle continues to write about how difficult it is to port the program from the ST to the IBM-compatible environment. Sheesh! Nothing like NOT practicing what one preachees, is there? Fist, don't plan in advance for being able to port the program, and then pick a non portable language. Third, write about it :-). Funny thing was that Dr. Pournelle never pointed out that he and his wife should have executed a top-down design for their project, all he said was that it was difficult. The other thing that Pournelle freely admits is that items that he recieves without accompanying technical person to hold Pournelle's han tend to either get ignored or else get crummy reviews. In other words, the things that get the best reviews in Pournelle's column are the ones whose manufacturers went to the most effort to button-hole Pournelle. That isn't going to be very representative of what the rest of us users can expect for support, I suppose! If C-A wants a nice write-up in Dr. Pournelle's column, they should go get somebody from CSA to slap a turbo board in an Amiga, and then go firmly hold J.P.'s hand for a couple of days real soon anytime. I don't think it's worth taking any of the stuff that appears in Dr. Pournelle's Byte column too seriosly. --Bill wtm@neoucom.UUCP