fangchin@leland.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) (04/10/91)
In article <84050014@hpfcmdd.hp.com> edm@hpfcmdd.hp.com (Ed Moore) writes: >The 12/25/90 issue of PC Magazine, page 169, claims that a 386/33 gives more ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >bang for the buck if a math coprocessor isn't needed. I don't want to belittle or slight a well established, much read and popular computing mag. But I would like to point out one fact -> PC Mag's editors are humans beings too. => they would make mistakes just like the rest of us. Sure, they have big marketing clut, if they say yes, then a product immediately becomes hot, and vice versa. This has both good and bad side when someone relies on it soly for info. Two examples: (1). One big editor (hint, who writes the Inside Track) sometime earlier this year (? I don't read PC Mag anymore) claimed that someone TOLD him that MIT's X Windows can be only run on 486 class machines. So he want on and said that he considered X just another passing fad! I personal run X on a 3yrs old 20Mhz 386 without cache (8megs however) on a daily basis, right now I am typing this message from a xterm emulator on my box in the X environment. The display speed is on par with SUN SPARCstation 1 at medium load. An he (or whoever talked to him) considered this SLOOOOOW??? I pity him, because he obviously is not exposed to one of the most exciting public domain softwares, X386 server wrtten by the brilliant German Thomas Roell for 386/486 boxes running 386 Unices. Thomas himself uses a 33Mhz 8meg memory and he can always achieve a composite display performance BETTER than SPARC 1!! And this PC Mag editor calls this SLOOOOOOW? BTW, X11R4 does not require a math coprossor, Thomas doesn't have one. (2). Recently, IDEK 17" monitor was picked as PC Mag Editor's choice. I played with a brand new one right out of box extensively using Thomas Roell's configurable X server to give it a though work out at display res from 640x480 all way up to 1152x900, other than the last one, I always used 256 color, non-interlaced resolution. I will say my impression: If I were to pick a 17", almost flat screen monitor for extended period of high resolution use, I WON'T pick IDEK!! The worst shortcoming of this monitor? -> narrow horizontal sync frequency range, it's upper limit is ONLY 50 Khz! That's bad! (see below for reason) Because a display's resolution is defined the portion of time of the a electron beam sweeping from left side to the screen's right side and back to the left side. So, if such a sweeping takes 1280 clock tics of the current vedio driving clock timing, and if you somehow can take 960 clock tics out of the 1280, then you be definition have a horizontal resolution 960. Vertical res is defined similarily. This is all in layman's language, so technical precise- ness is not claimed here. BTW, YOU HAVE NO REASON TO USE 640X480 800X600 OR 1024X768 by the above definition. That's why I used an unothordox 960 as example. Suffice to say if you want to achive HIGH SCREEN REFRESH RATE, you need to have board (eg high limit) horizontal sync frequency range, with upper limit of it perferable in 65Khz ~ 70Khz or beyone if you can find one. The boarder/ higher, the better. For more details, see X386 release notes for a tutorial on vedio timing basics. Also if you want to buy monitor, please heed my advise here too. In addition, I am SICK of seeing montor ads claiming non-interlaceness. Noninterlaceness DOES YOU NO GOOD if the screen refresh rate is low, like 60Hz or below. One can have all non-interlace h/she wants but with a low image refresh rate, defined as the driving clock (eg. 65Mhz) divided by the time required to sweep a electron beam from left to right back to left AND from top to bottom back to top, then your eyes will suffer badly! Go with high refresh rate, like 70Hz or even higher, NOT just non-interlaceness It's sad in the world of Bill Gates, 640x480, 800x600 or all VESA suff are all that are available to people. If IBM had not come up XGA, I am afraid that MSDOS users would be trapped in 1024x728 for much longer. Enough said. I just want to point out the potential fallacy of quoting PC Mag (or even scientific publications sometimes) without checking out your quote carefully. Please don't construe my comments in this article as flame to PC Mag or anyone. I only hope my reminder would bring in some new perspective to this discussion. Regards, Chin Fang Mechanical Engineering Department Stanford University fangchin@leland.stanford.edu
c60b-1eq@e260-3e.berkeley.edu (Noam Mendelson) (04/10/91)
In article <1991Apr9.213259.17287@leland.Stanford.EDU> fangchin@leland.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) writes: >In article <84050014@hpfcmdd.hp.com> edm@hpfcmdd.hp.com (Ed Moore) writes: >>The 12/25/90 issue of PC Magazine, page 169, claims that a 386/33 gives more >>bang for the buck if a math coprocessor isn't needed. >I don't want to belittle or slight a well established, much read and popular >computing mag. But I would like to point out one fact -> PC Mag's editors >are humans beings too. => they would make mistakes just like the rest of >us. Sure, they have big marketing clut, if they say yes, then a product >immediately becomes hot, and vice versa. This has both good and bad side >when someone relies on it soly for info. >Two examples: > > ...text deleted... I agree with you that PC Magazine can err every once in a while. But I am familiar with that article and according to the article, the benchmark results were the average of previous machines reviewed by PC Magazine, discounting the very slow and very fast machines. Therefore, it is very unlikely that the benchmark results posted in that article are in error. However, the statement "a 386/33 gives more bang for the buck" may not apply today. This article is 3 months old, and prices have changed even though performance has not. +==========================================================================+ | Noam Mendelson ..!agate!ucbvax!web!c60b-1eq | "I haven't lost my mind, | | c60b-1eq@web.Berkeley.EDU | it's backed up on tape | | University of California at Berkeley | somewhere." |
pjh@mccc.edu (Pete Holsberg) (04/10/91)
In article <1991Apr9.213259.17287@leland.Stanford.EDU> fangchin@leland.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) writes:
=I don't want to belittle or slight a well established, much read and popular
=computing mag. But I would like to point out one fact -> PC Mag's editors
=are humans beings too. => they would make mistakes just like the rest of
=us. Sure, they have big marketing clut, if they say yes, then a product
=immediately becomes hot, and vice versa. This has both good and bad side
=when someone relies on it soly for info.
Two things:
(1) The editor you wrote about offers opinions, not the results of testing.
(2) When you use the results of their testing, read the "how we tested"
portion to make sure that they and you have the same goals.
Pete
--
Prof. Peter J. Holsberg Mercer County Community College
Voice: 609-586-4800 Engineering Technology, Computers and Math
UUCP:...!princeton!mccc!pjh 1200 Old Trenton Road, Trenton, NJ 08690
Internet: pjh@mccc.edu Trenton Computer Festival -- 4/20-21/91davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) (04/11/91)
In article <1991Apr10.000401.26196@agate.berkeley.edu> c60b-1eq@e260-3e.berkeley.edu (Noam Mendelson) writes: | I agree with you that PC Magazine can err every once in a while. But I am | familiar with that article and according to the article, the benchmark results | were the average of previous machines reviewed by PC Magazine, discounting | the very slow and very fast machines. And nebulous things like "bang for the buck" are cost performance figures rather than performance alone. The MIPS/$ figure depends on what benchmark you use, but they all run faster on the 486, given identical support and peripherals. -- bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen) sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me
c60b-1eq@e260-1e.berkeley.edu (Noam Mendelson) (04/11/91)
In article <3675@sixhub.UUCP> davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes: >In article <1991Apr10.000401.26196@agate.berkeley.edu> c60b-1eq@e260-3e.berkeley.edu (Noam Mendelson) writes: > >| I agree with you that PC Magazine can err every once in a while. But I am >| familiar with that article and according to the article, the benchmark results >| were the average of previous machines reviewed by PC Magazine, discounting >| the very slow and very fast machines. > And nebulous things like "bang for the buck" are cost performance >figures rather than performance alone. The MIPS/$ figure depends on what >benchmark you use, but they all run faster on the 486, given identical >support and peripherals. MIPS/$ figures of three months ago definitely do not apply today. However, the performance (note: no dollar signs attached) remains the same among identical CPU's. +==========================================================================+ | Noam Mendelson ..!agate!ucbvax!web!c60b-1eq | "I haven't lost my mind, | | c60b-1eq@web.Berkeley.EDU | it's backed up on tape | | University of California at Berkeley | somewhere." |
edm@hpfcmdd.hp.com (Ed Moore) (04/12/91)
>But I would like to point out one fact -> PC Mag's editors >are humans beings too. => they would make mistakes just like the rest of >us. Yes, this is true of anyone. But PC Magazine has resources that can be matched by few. I've bought a number of hardware and software products based on the recommendation of either PC Mag or InfoWorld; I've never been disappointed. It does make me feel better, though, to find laudatory reviews of a product in two different publications. >One big editor (hint, who writes the Inside Track) sometime earlier this year >(? I don't read PC Mag anymore) claimed that someone TOLD him that MIT's X >Windows can be only run on 486 class machines. So he want on and said that >he considered X just another passing fad! Inside Track is the comic strip of PC Magazine. I read it for laughs. There is considerable variation in the usefulness of the different columnists. There is one other whose column I consider a waste of my time. A third one is worth reading even if I don't care about his topic.
fangchin@elaine54.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) (04/13/91)
In article <84050022@hpfcmdd.hp.com> edm@hpfcmdd.hp.com (Ed Moore) writes: >>But I would like to point out one fact -> PC Mag's editors >>are humans beings too. => they would make mistakes just like the rest of >>us. > >Yes, this is true of anyone. But PC Magazine has resources that can be >matched by few. I've bought a number of hardware and software products >based on the recommendation of either PC Mag or InfoWorld; I've never been >disappointed. It does make me feel better, though, to find laudatory >reviews of a product in two different publications. > But sad to say, too many people that I have met blindly believe PC Mag even people in the know treat some materials in it just as jokes. That's why I put in some real tests honestly conducted by myself just to make my point more clear. People who have experience with X386 X11R4 server will agree with me for sure. I am confident. Furthermore, regarding UNIX and X Windows (or it's related products, like the contributed Andrew Tool kit), PC Mag editors are generally not experts even I am convinced that some of them are good at these. But those who are good are not talking, those who don't know much often big-mouthing, That's irresponsible! See my remarks above for reason. >>One big editor (hint, who writes the Inside Track) sometime earlier this year >>(? I don't read PC Mag anymore) claimed that someone TOLD him that MIT's X >>Windows can be only run on 486 class machines. So he want on and said that >>he considered X just another passing fad! > >Inside Track is the comic strip of PC Magazine. I read it for laughs. >There is considerable variation in the usefulness of the different >columnists. There is one other whose column I consider a waste of my time. >A third one is worth reading even if I don't care about his topic. I am hoping that your comment and my earlier posting will give people who have not gotton such perspective a healthier view towards pubs like PC Mag. Chin Fang Mechanical Engineering Department Stanford University fangchin@leland.stanford.edu