john13@garfield.UUCP (11/18/87)
Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer and Dave (The B2000 Guy) Haynie write: ><> Vaxstations are to expensive. But a Sun 3/50 is $3500, plus $1000 for ><> or so for a disk (from someone other than Sun, of course). Add $300 ><> for a full Unix. >< ><> Given that pricing, why should someone your average user buy an A2000? ------------ >< ><SOFTWARE is a good one. If you can write all your own, OK. > >Ah, but you don't *have* to write your own for Unix (unlike the >Amiga). It's already been done. No matter how much I like mg, real >GNU blows it out of the water. X is free. VC is free. Scheme is free. >KCL is free. Most of the better Amiga PD/PA software started life on >Unix. Of course, if you want commercial software, the Unix market is >much better established than the Amiga market. I submit that anyone whose major software needs are GNU, X, VC, Scheme, KCL etc, and who knows how to operate them effectively, *could* program them. That's the major difference... I wouldn't recommend a VAX or Sun workstation to a teenager who'd never owned a computer before, but I would recommend an A500. Ditto for a company employee who needed IBM compatibility at home or work, except he'd want an A2000. Guru-level hardware and software hackers need to keep in mind that many of the issues which are most important to them are non-issues for 90% or more of potential users. And the user-interface (which is also user-accessible) of the Amiga I consider far superior to that of these super-powerful micro's and mini's... I avoid them as much as possible and offload all the work I can to my machine at home. Think about it, if *you* want to write a program which doesn't require VM and multiple megs of mass storage, and that you would personally consider useful, will you write it for Unix or for the Amiga? The same applies to running a program that someone else has written which is available on both machines. The ultra-large scale view is great when it's needed, but not for Mr. Average except possibly WRT a hard drive and a faster processor; even then I'll bet just as much time is wasted looking things up in manuals as is gained by having a 10Mhz as opposed to an 8Mhz machine (unless you're a guru, the exception rather than the rule). This type of area has been vastly under- explored, IMHO, and should rightly be a major selling point. "Amiga - the power without the confusing software manuals" I mean, just sit one guy down in front of an IBM with WordPerfect, and another in front of an Amiga with WordPerfect, and see who has the easier time learning how to work it! The Amiga guy doesn't even need the keyboard template. John -- "She's sort of a 'pit baby', with interlocking jaws. We feed her on chicken parts." "But baby-fighting has been outlawed, hasn't it?" -- Tracy Ullman describing her infant daughter to David Letterman