Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!nrc
From: nrc@cbnews.att.com (N. Richard Caldwell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: QuickST vs TurboST
Message-ID: <1990Jul2.043449.14282@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 2 Jul 90 04:34:49 GMT
Sender: nrc@cbnews.att.com (N. Richard Caldwell)
Organization: AT&T Network Systems  -  Columbus, Ohio
Lines: 98


First a little disclaimer, I own the fourth copy of Turbo ST sold and
I have been beta testing for SofTrek since not long after that
purchase.  I am personally responsible for holding up the release of
three different Turbo ST updates by discovering bugs at the last
minute. :-)

I am speaking only for myself.  The folks at SofTrek are much too busy
for this sort of thing.

In article <1996@electro.com> ignac@electro.com (Ignac Kolenko) writes:
>
>As I have stated in a few postings to this newsgroup, I have left the 
>company as a full time employee. I am still a developper for Branch Always
>since anything I develop will be marketed through Branch Always, and I will
>be paid royalties. Branch Always is still around, and as long as Turbo ST
>exists and is upgraded, so will Quick ST. 

This strikes me as an odd way to define your company's product.
Perhaps you've just worded it poorly but it sounds like your product
exists not to meet your customer's needs but rather to compete with 
Turbo ST.

>Quick ST supports GDOS fonts, Turbo ST doesn't. 

This could be misleading.  True, as of the latest version of Turbo ST I
don't think SofTrek has replaced any of the OS functions that deal with
GDOS fonts specifically.  But this does _not_ mean that Turbo ST will not
speed up many programs that use GDOS fonts.  The best example is
Publisher ST where I can scroll through a typical page up to _twice_ 
as fast with Turbo ST as without.

I suspect that the reason they haven't replaced GDOS fonts yet is that
they've been pursuing speed improvements in order of what would seem
to be useful to the largest number of costumers.  Their time spent 
specifically on speeding up Word Perfect (which I hear Quick ST still 
doesn't affect significantly) has probably been a greater boon to their 
users than time spent speeding up GDOS. 

>That's all there is to it. Unfortunately, since Darek is
>currently in the process of moving to Seattle to begin his real job at
>Microsoft (boo hiss - the MSDOS people! :-) there's no one around to
>respond to questions. I sincerely hope that people out there can understand
>this current situation and not draw any hasty conclusions from it. 

This is sort of silly.  You ask that we please excuse your lack of 
support while you get on with your 'real jobs' but you ask that we 
don't say that there are any problems with your support?   Producing 
Turbo ST _is_ the people at SofTrek's "real job."  They're attempting 
to make a living _supporting_ ST users the way they expect to be 
supported.  That explains the price differential between the two
products in a nutshell.

>I for one know that we have done
>more than SoftTrek has ever done (I have never received anything from
>SoftTrek about Turbo ST upgrades being available, except for 1 newsletter.
>Their upgrades are more expensive, and frankly, for the few percent 
>difference in speed between Turbo and Quick, I think there is no question
>that Quick ST is better. unless some of you out there can really tell
>the difference between 1300% and 1305% or whatever the current numbers are.)

More than SofTrek has ever done?  I can't agree.  SofTrek was
accelerating STs before there was any other way to do it, no blitters, 
no Turbo16 boards and certainly no Quick ST.  I don't know whether 
there would have even been a Quick ST were it not for Turbo ST. 

Your claim that the difference between Quick ST and Turbo ST is 
merely the difference between a 1300% and 1305% acceleration (numbers
arrived at with Branch Always' own benchmarking program) is a gross
over simplification of the issue.  A benchmarking program may or may
not reflect how a software accelerator affects a user's real world
application.  

When the first demo of the commercial version of Quick ST came out 
claiming based on benchmarks to be nearly as fast as Turbo ST I gave
it a try.  My experience at that time was that while Quick ST did
speed up some programs nearly as much as Turbo ST there were other
programs, some of which I use heavily, where Turbo ST held a significant
advantage.  I also noticed that at least that version of Quick ST seemed 
more bomb prone than Turbo ST.

I'd recommend that anyone who has chosen Quick ST over Turbo ST based
souly on benchmarks and/or price try one of the Turbo ST demos that
can be found on GEnie or perhaps your local BBS.  You may find that
the difference in your day to day applications is greater than you
have been lead to believe by the "benchmarks."

If so, now's the time to find out because I'm told that SofTrek will be
giving a discount on the purchase of Turbo ST to anyone who sends in
their original Quick ST disk.  According to the press release for 
their latest update (version 1.82) the offer is good until September.
The announcement should be in the latest online newsletters soon.  I can
email the announcement to anyone who can't find it elsewhere.


"Don't drive too slowly."                 Richard Caldwell
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                                          nrc@cbnews.att.com