Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!emory!att!iuvax!maytag!watmath!arpepper
From: arpepper@watmath.waterloo.edu (Adrian Pepper)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Subject: Re: Is it really worth it?
Message-ID: <1990Oct25.170755.20480@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Date: 25 Oct 90 17:07:55 GMT
References: <1990Oct25.033635.20290@athena.mit.edu>
Organization: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Lines: 39
Cc: rlbiddle bgg

In article <1990Oct25.033635.20290@athena.mit.edu> bhelf@athena.mit.edu (Bill Helfinstine) writes:
>
>All right, folks, this is what it boils down to.
>
>Everyone is trashing their Commodores.  This is the sad truth.  The question
>is, is this the right thing to do?  Do we all need to get 286 clones and learn
>WordPerfect?  I know my Commodore isn't ready for the scrap heap yet.  Is
>yours?  Should it be?

I myself wouldn't mind joining an organization to fight the domination
of WordPerfect, which isn't.

I'm keeping my Commodore stuff because its utility (fun) value is more
than I could get for selling it.  And occasionally it proves useful.  I
really have an attachment to the stuff, and have to make a conscious
effort to avoid wasting too much time with it.

Even an 8088 system, given a hard drive, gives a person more effective
computing power than one had at the terminals of most time-sharing
systems in the late 1970's.  When I bought my Commodore 64 I was
suffering under the misapprehension that home computers would always be
inferior to the "real computers" I had learned about from 1975-1980.

Multi-processing aside, this is not the case.  And even multi-processing
will be handled properly by $1000 computers with mainstream software,
in at most five years, other things being equal.  (Note, I now don't
consider anything without a hard drive to be a computer.) The cost of
reliable legitimate software, on the other hand.  Why does every user
have to pay for technical support they will probably never use, and
junkmail they will just throw away?

And of course, there are always Amigas.  Technically superior, but
without mainstream software support.  And slightly expensive.  And
having trouble keeping up with new developments.  But then, so's my
brain.

Just my opinions.

Adrian.