6600wood@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Joseph Wood) (06/25/91)
First of all, please don't flame me. I am not writing this letter to make anyone mad. I am just ignorant. I am in the market for a computer. I am a failed computer science major who went to economics. I am looking for a fun computer that has a good interface and is a good Unix platform. I am also interested in Graphics and possibly video. Anyway, I saw a Next on campus and was very impressed. However, when I mentioned this to some friends of mine, they suggested that I look into an Amiga. I would like someone to rationally tell me what the strong points of the Next are and what it does that no one else does. I would also be interested in any faults it might have. If anyone can tell my reasons to buy a Next over an Amiga without starting a flame war, I would appreciate those also. Thankyou.
petrilli@wookumz.unknown (Chris Petrilli) (06/25/91)
Joseph Wood writes: First of all, please don't flame me. I am not writing this letter to make anyone mad. I am just ignorant. Fine... we don't need any more "my computer is better than yours" wars around here... I would hope that NeXT users are above that. I am in the market for a computer. I am a failed computer science major who went to economics. I am looking for a fun computer that has a good interface and is a good Unix platform. I am also interested in Graphics and possibly video. Anyway, I saw a Next on campus and was very impressed. Most everyone is... I've been since 1988. Don't forget that price/performance plays a LARGE role in considering a system. NO reason to buy the best computer on the market if it costs 10x as much as one that is 99% as good. In my opinion, the NeXT is definately the best buy on the market, providing performance comparable to a SPARCstation 1+ for ALOT less money. However, when I mentioned this to some friends of mine, they suggested that I look into an Amiga. I would like someone to rationally tell me what the strong points of the Next are and what it does that no one else does. I would also be interested in any faults it might have. If anyone can tell my reasons to buy a Next over an Amiga without starting a flame war, I would appreciate those also. You should always consider ALL the options, especially with such a major purchase as a computer. I believe that you can look at the Amiga as a nice machine, but incapable of really competing with workstations, which is what the NeXT is. I have used The Amiga 3000/UX running Sys V.4, and while it is nice, it doesn't compete with the NeXT as a Unix machine. If you are really involved in video, or plan on it... look to the NeXT, as the NeXTdimension is really unequaled anywhere else. Where else can you run 30frame/sec video in a window while moving around 32bit TIFF files without so much as a slow down. Because of DisplayPostscript, the NeXT provides the user with the ability to quickly adapt to new display technologies, which is an big advantage. For a long time, the Amiga was THE graphics platform of choice, for good reason... it had adaquate quality, but above all was FAST. However, the reason it was so fast is that the hardware of the graphics system was intimately tied to the rest of the system, making it hard for Commodore to upgrade the system from it's original specs. NeXT on the other hand chose a device independent method. While this increases the overhead, CPU cycles have become, in general, cheap, and it does make for a more versatile system. You should call NeXT, and ask for a promotional video, it should show you alot of the capabilities of the NeXTdimension. I doubt the college had a NeXTdimension for demonstration. :-) Chris -- | Chris Petrilli | petrilli@gnu.ai.mit.edu | I don't even speak for myself.