Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!njin!princeton!udel!mmdf
From: mjsagar@sandia.gov (9123 SAGARTZ, MATHIAS J.)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Amigas in the big picture
Message-ID: <20460@louie.udel.EDU>
Date: 25 Jul 89 20:57:25 GMT
Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU
Lines: 50


	In article <38517@sgi.sgi.com> mplevine@sgi.com (Marshal Levine) 
gives us his perspective on the Amiga.  He makes some very good points and
there is a lot to what he said but please allow me to offer a slightly
different viewpoint. 

	I've often heard the Amiga critisized and judged by standards
developed for other machines.  It seems as though we must be the best
in every possible application to be credible.  So what questions do
you ask from the deaf-mute world of MSDOS?  How good are the
spreadsheets and databases? To be judged "faster" you must be the
quickest in every possible application and hardware configuration. 
And from the Mac world we get questions about postscript output and
consistent user interface.  Well maybe we need to rebut each of these
issues one by one, but what's the use.  Marshal is right.  For many
applications Amiga software is a generation or two behind the times. 
Is that important?  To some, perhaps many, it most certainly is.  But
what about the other areas? 

	Marshal may casually say "Forget graphics and sound for a
minute" but there are those to whom these capabilities are important.
To him "400 lines of non-interlaced vertical resolution is better
than 400 lines of interlaced resolution,"  but has he talked to any
video guys lately?  When I got my machine I ran the standard Byte
magazine multiplication benchmark in Basic (the way Byte did for
every machine they reviewed) and the Amiga beat the AT by a good
margin.  Then just for the heck of it I tried a little routine that I
had written to find the roots of a transcendental equation
{sin(x)*log(x)-cos(x)*x**.35}. I ran the same basic code on my
machine and a stock IBM-AT and this time the Amiga was faster by more
than a factor to two.  So who's faster?  Give a coprossesser and the
right software the AT would have blown my doors off.  Games have sold
more than a few Amigas and there the graphic and audio capabilities
make the system still very impressive.  Some may not care but don't
try to debate my kids. 
	To Marshal with his particular needs and interests, what he
wrote makes a lot of sense.  But the Amiga has capabilities in so
many areas that to judge it reasonably requires a very broad
perspective.  Clearly the Amiga is not the "best" at everything and
with time some of its extraordinary features are looking less
exceptional.  However, the operating system shows a lot of promise
and IFF is worth more than gold to some of us.  While the big 
software houses will probably never show much interst, the 
exceptional capabilities and flexitility of the Amiga have attracted 
more than our share of the best and the brightest.  
	Courage men!  Grab you lances, there are still some windmills 
out there!  
	Enough of this banter, now its time to get on with the real 
topic of this message, a comparison of the computational speed of the 
Cray XMP 416 and Iris workstations!.................................