pcb@basin05.cacs.usl.edu (Peter C. Bahrs) (04/11/91)
Well I just finished a two month evaluation of PC's and windows compatibility. We are going to enhance an existing IBM ps/2 70 16mhz lab (32 of them) with faster 386/33mhz machines. I got 5 machines, and performed a detailed and extensive performance evaluation on them w.r.t. the our software configuration running on the ps/2's. The software includes netware 2.15a, ncsa packet drivers and telbin, ftpbin, lantastic 3.03 ,windows 3.0, winword, designer, actor, smalltalk/v, and numerous dos development environments including turbo pascal, modula 2, and quick c. To be brief, on a scale of 1 - 10 with 10 being the best, listed below are the ratings I gave to the machines. IBM PS/2 70 10 DELL 386/33 10 Tandon 8 PC Brand 6 Cumulus 5 Compuad 4 The dell and ps/2 ran everything perfectly. I am really impressed with the dell, I don't recall any UAE type problems. The Tandon ran everything also!, but I could not get the machine to get past 12mhz!!! wierd, at least that is what norton si and atspeed said. Whatever its clock speed, it was noticeably slower than the dell. PC Brand, flakes out when running some dos stuff under windows, si.exe doesn't work. Cumulus was terrible on the network under windows, constant crashes. The compuad died, did not run si.exe under windows, and would not ctl-alt-del when any network software was loaded! ughh. A year ago I would have said the ibm bites it due to the lack of support for the UB nicps2 card. It is supported now and runs EVERYTHING. I have really gained an appreciation for quality control. The last three machines had great prices (< $3400) but you get what you pay for. Software that ran stand alone (i.e., just windows, or just network, or just modula) ran on all of them. The problems came when environment were mixed. The graphics on the Tandon (Princeton and Orchid Pro ii) was very nice. If they fix the clock problem, this machine is it. Otherwise, dell is good. Their super vga has an annoying interlaced scroll in super res mode though. These are my opinions only. If you had better luck with a machine, great.