Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!mjl
From: mjl@ut-emx.UUCP (Maurice LeBrun)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga outclassed
Message-ID: <27870@ut-emx.UUCP>
Date: 10 Apr 90 06:17:01 GMT
References: <1316@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca> <11025@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>
Reply-To: mjl@emx.UUCP (Maurice LeBrun)
Organization: UTexas Computation Center, Austin, Texas
Lines: 36

No flames follow, honest! :-)

In article <11025@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> mseidle@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Mike Seidle) writes:
	[...]
>	My 6-10 experiences using the amiga have left me with mixed feelings:
>
	[...]
>	Second, I was very, very disapointed with the operating system.

You probably mean AmigaDos.  The OS Kernel ("Exec") is pretty
uniformly praised hereabouts.

>	It was better than MS-DOS (what isn't ?)-but PC **ix it cannot touch 
>	It had the "look and feel" of a toy.  It also seemed to be
>	slow w/ disk IO. Judging by the NeXT's OS, CBM could have a
>	legit. PROFESSIONAL system if their port of UNIX is decent.

Mostly (but not all) "out-of-box" syndrome.  Commodore ships the
machine in a rather ho-hum standard configuration.  Equip it with a
decent shell (plenty of options there..), complete with pipes,
aliasing, memory resident commands, multiple shells at low cost
(shared resident lists, internal functions in a shared library), ARexx
interface, a powerful console handler (conman or newcon) and you've
got a very powerful command environment.  VMS doesn't come close to
matching it (IMHO).  Unix doesn't have that "real-time" feel.  Neither
are as easy to customize to your tastes.

There are many more ways to beef up the basic configuration, using
mostly public domain software (which tends to be very good).  The
ho-hum state of the shipped machine is a common complaint.

Also, the Amiga doesn't really shine until you stick a hard disk on
it.  'Course, few micros do, these days.

Maurice LeBrun                Institute for Fusion Studies  
mjl@fusion.ph.utexas.edu      University of Texas at Austin