daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) (05/14/91)
In article <1336@VAX1.CC.UAKRON.EDU> r3drs@VAX1.CC.UAKRON.EDU (david r snyder) writes: >Are great graphics and sound the pinnacle of computer performance? Sure, >it has given the amiga its edge so far, but look at the comparative costs of >a similar Mac or Ibm which can perform to the degree that an amiga can. There >is more to computing than a 24 bit display. Actually, I agree with that. I think that graphics, more than anything, has been the popular metric by which new computer systems get judged. Which is strange, since for many applications, it's the least important factor. As much as I can control it, I have been trying to build Amiga systems that have a reasonable balance of features. Hard disk interface, memory speed, expansion capabilities and speed, etc. are all valid concerns in the hardware. In the very competitive PC Clone market, especially, I think you see a number of these factors ignored except at the very high end, because the "Average Joe" doesn't understand much about the computer, but can certainly see what the display looks like. On the software side, it's much more complicated. The OS feel, more than anything, is what you're going to have to live with while using the system. And if you really intend to get real work done, hoping that someday a slow system will get faster is unacceptable; it has to get fast NOW. I ran into this on our Apollo systems. Mentor Graphics came up with a new, more efficient interface to their programs, but it was unacceptibly slow on the older systems. So I kept using the older, perhaps clumsier interface until we actually got machines powerful enough to run the new one. And of course, actual applications make a big difference. At the very same time, I had Amigas going faster than even the newer Apollos we got. But they don't have an acceptable schematic CAD program yet, so I can't use the for that, no matter what. They did have better DTP software than the Apollo or UNIX based stuff I used, so I switched right away. And at this point, I have enough simple CAD stuff going on the Amiga that I couldn't get a good portion of real work done on any other system without a significant investment in porting. -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy "That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight" -R.E.M.