singer@uwovax.uwo.ca (08/26/90)
I am getting ready to turn over my 5yr old Zenith XT to my student daughter. I
expect to replace it with one of two machines, either a 286 or a 386SX. I get
conflicting advice. First, most of my work is text or text-database; no
number-crunching, but I do use Tracker which is stack oriented and takes
forever to process with constant calls to the hard disk. Second, I might like
at some time in the future to use the sophisticated packages made possible by
OS/2 or Windows, if one can ever figure out how to make use, for example, of
Agenda. The conflicting advice is this: Buy a 386 instead of 386SX--youll find
it can do much more of what you want. Or, Buy a 386SX with additional ram for
the money; it will do more with the extra memory dollar for dollar and you
don't really need the extra processor speed. Or, buy a 286 and much memory
instead, and perhaps an even faster hard disk and a controller cache for your
kind of problem. For those of you who have confronted such dilemmas or who have
now had experience with the various machines, what do you think?--
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Ben Singer Department of Sociology
University of Western Ontario
Singer@uwo.ca London, Ontario
Singer@uwovax.bitnet N6A 5C2
(519) 660-0671 (home)
(519) 679-2111 Ext 5137