Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!amdahl!amdcad!pepsi!phil
From: phil@pepsi.amd.com (Phil Ngai)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 640K limit
Message-ID: <28841@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Date: 20 Jan 90 01:04:15 GMT
References: <4668.25aed7f2@uwovax.uwo.ca> <1468@blackbird.afit.af.mil> <28808@amdcad.AMD.COM> <2021@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
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Reply-To: phil@pepsi.AMD.COM (Phil Ngai)
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 68

In article <2026@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen) writes:
|  I don't buy this at all. Users want to get things done, and they are
|not about to buy a program because it needs more MB or does
|multi-tasking. Unless the application does something the that can't be

I think they would. If you have a choice between DOS Pagemaker which
makes you wait several minutes while saving a file and OS/2 Pagemaker
which starts off a thread to do the saving so you can do something
else, which would you choose?

|done on a smaller (cheaper) machine, neither the personal user nor the
|company will spend the money to get a bigger, slower, o/s and add memory
|to run it.

I would consider the difference between something like Wordstar and Word
for Windows to be worth the extra hardware cost. The DOT is buying
40,000 sets of Windows applications. True, it's taxpayer dollars.

|  The dealers around here are managing to sell applications which look
|like Macs, and they seem to do it with apps which run on existing 640k

Sure, once you get into the application. As long as you don't run out of
memory. Surely you don't think DOS is easy to use or user-friendly?

|There are some windows apps, and a few EMS, but I have yet to
|see an app which really *needed* os/2, and which was so much better than
|what was currently running that people *had to have it*. I have yet to
|see a dealer who made as much as 10% of his/her sales in os/2 as opposed
|to DOS.

No, it is still under development but I'm excited about the prospects.

|people won't rush into os/2. And with unix interfaces like Motif, and X,
|and millions of existing unix boxes to run applications, there are good
|reasons for software vendors to chase that market first. I suspect that

"Millions of existing unix boxes"? What kind of drugs are you smoking?
How many can run the same binaries? Or will you need Sun-3 binaries,
Sun-4 binaries, DECstation binaries, MIPS binaries, etc?

|there are 100 times as many Sun users as os/2 (just to name one vendor),

But what's the ratio of Sun-4 to PC compatibles?

|and these users are used to paying three to ten times as much for
|software as the PC users.

Well, sure you can try to marry a rich girl and be well off, but there's
a flaw in that strategy. The vendors which offer the most cost
effective solutions will win big. Have you ever priced Interleaf on a
Sun-4 compared to a 386 PC? The people who charge lots of bucks for Unix
applications (are there ANY cheap Unix applications?) may be making
money now but they will be sitting on the sidelines as time goes by.

|| Have you figured out yet why Apple sued Microsoft?
|| Have you ever seen the screen of Microsoft Windows 3.0?
|
|  I'm sorry, I miss how this ties to the discussion of the future of
|os/2. Is there a connection?

Yes, because OS/2 and Windows 3.0 look a lot like a Mac. Apple didn't
sue because they are SOBs, they sued because they saw a very serious
threat to their sales. Maybe you don't have enough vision to understand
but Apple sure does.

--
Phil Ngai, phil@diablo.amd.com		{uunet,decwrl,ucbvax}!amdcad!phil
Peace through strength.