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From: don@brahms.udel.edu (Donald R Lloyd)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Sorry Guys, There is NO WAY!
Keywords: AMIGA 3000 vs NEXT
Message-ID: <16588@brahms.udel.edu>
Date: 6 Dec 90 18:53:54 GMT
References: <21930@well.sf.ca.us> <14701@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> <21993@well.sf.ca.us>
Organization: University of Delaware
Lines: 67

In article <21993@well.sf.ca.us> yoo@well.sf.ca.us (Young-Kyu Yoo) writes:
>  The 030 Amigas are more expensive than the 040 NeXTstations.  Do you 
>really expect to get an 040 upgrade and money back from Commodore??  This is
>what it would take to make your 040 Amiga the same low price as the 040
>NeXTStation.  
>  The real issue is price/performance.  There are many machines much faster
>than the NeXT or Amiga.  But the NeXT beats nearly all of them in terms of
>price/performance.  The Amiga is a valiant challenger to NeXT.  But it still
>has a ways to go if it wants to match NeXT's price/performance.  

	Buy one piece of software for your NeXT and you've likely thrown out
that price advantage, or at least a good portion of it.

>  As for matching NeXT's price/features, the Amiga has a very long way to 
>go.  Where's that Amiga DSP?
	The AMiga's custom coprocessors are far from being as powerful as the
56001, but are not too shabby.  They certainly make the display fast.

>Those Amiga DMA channels?
	Oh, you mean the 25 DMA channels that every Amiga's had since the
first 1000's shipped what, 6 years ago?  I believe Agnus has got 'em
all.

>That Amiga Mach with
>parallel processing capabilities?
	What NeXT hardware is there with multiprocessing abilities?  If you mean
the processor & DSP, I think you're confusing co- with multi- processing,
but that's another war.  AmigaDOS is small and fast, UNIX is big and slow.
Both have good and bad points.

>That 2.88 MB floppy drive compatible with
>both 720K and 1.44 MB MS-DOS formats?  
	As soon as such drives become readily available with SCSI interfaces,
they'll be around.

	
	As long as you're asking "Where is" questions, here are a few about the
NeXT:

Where is the inexpensive software?
		 the under-$500 color video digitizer?
		 The NeXT Fred Fish collection?
		 The NeXT employees who spend a great deal of time answering just about
			any question posted to the net?  If I have a problem with my
			3000, I can post a question here and often have it answered
			within hours by the people who built it.
         Any third-party hardware to plug into the expansion slots of those
			few NeXTs which actually have them?  (Besides the $7000 DSP board).
         NeXT-specific magazines?
		 A NeXT developer's association?
		 NeXT Video Toaster?  Frame buffers?  Under $5000 color systems?
		 All-NeXT trade shows?
		 Mac or PC emulation (yes, I know softPC is coming, but can it
         	with the compatibility offered by the bridgeboards?)
		 How about an inexpensive version that the average person can afford?
			For many people, it's not "The Amiga 3000 costs more than the
			NeXT," it's "How the hell am I going to scrape up enough
			money to get a computer?"

	Both machines are useful; the NeXT is better in some respects, the
Amiga in others.  I wouldn't mind having one (or more:-) of each,
but the Amiga won out as my choice.

-- 
  Gibberish             Amiga 3000 owner/fanatic
  is spoken             Contact don@brahms.udel.edu for more information.
    here.               DISCLAIMER:  It's all YOUR fault.