SARGON@UMass.BITNET (12/25/87)
In light of the humorous (if not entirely short sighted) notes on the usefulness of multitasking to the "average" microcomputer user I thought Id toss in some historically relevant views.. 1. A microcomputer user will never need anything more than a few cassette tapes to hold his work. 2. A microcomputer user will never need anything but a TV set to display information from a computer. 3. A microcomputer user will never need even as much as 64K of memory. 4. A microcomputer user will never need a language other than interpretive BASIC to perform any task. Last time I heard the Atari 1040ST came with an 800K floppy disk drive, requires a monitor (as Atari didnt put the modulator in there), comes stock with 1MB of RAM and doesnt come stock with BASIC. Does this make the designers at Atari morons for putting in such useless junk? I think not. Finally, your "average" user of a modern microcomputer (this gets rid of the Apple II and C64 crowds) is more likely to be in a business or higher education setting than in the kitchen as a $x000 recipie file. Both of these areas are demanding the ability to share and distribute information. This means networks. Networks need software drivers that requires a certain degree of multitasking. Im sure Atari the self proclaimed "vertically integrated" computer maker will be (or hopefully IS) working on both multitasking and networking. The 286/386 and the 030 all have memory management hardware whether you use it or not. Why not use it? -Steve ccccccccccc Stephen Halpin Sargon@UMass.BITNET PO Box 241 Amherst, MA 01004-0241
lharris@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Leonard Harris) (12/25/87)
When I started working as an advisor at UofT, TSO was the main system besides batch card jobs through JCL. Back then if you mentioned a Micro, you were laued at and told they could never do what a BIG machine could do. Too bad I have to use unix on a this SUN toy now instead of a 370 !! Whats this have to do with multi-tasking? I'm not sure but the whole argument seems kinda stupid. Buy what you want. I have an atari for games and an IBM for programming and cad work. It would be really nice to have a multitasking Sun 3 but I can get by on less. If multitasking would force(?) programmers to produce better code then I'm all for it !