Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!maytag!csg.uwaterloo.ca!giguere
From: giguere@csg.uwaterloo.ca (Eric Giguere)
Subject: Re: Reality check: Amiga coverage is not a right, but a privilege
Message-ID: <1990Dec13.155848.8152@maytag.waterloo.edu>
Sender: daemon@maytag.waterloo.edu (Admin)
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 90 15:58:48 GMT
Lines: 30

In article <1395@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> U3364521@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au (Lou Cavallo) writes:
>PS: how many of us have read statements similar to "you don't need any
>multi tasking", or "multimedia has yet not arrived" in PC magazines? I
>realise I'm only scratching the tip of a volcano here but ...

Don't flame me for this, but.... most people DON'T need multitasking on
their computer.  What they do need is a way to switch rapidly between
applications and/or share data.  Very few people are TRULY doing two
concurrent things.  (Print spooling is about the only thing I can think of
that the average user will want to do.)  This is why MultiFinder on the
Mac, the ultimate kludge, is successful.  It works!  (Well, usually.)  It's
why Windows could get away with "co-operative multitasking".  It's why
the IBM world proliferates with TSRs.

BUT even so, the Amiga can offer all these capabilities BECAUSE it offers 
"true" multitasking, doing so much more cleanly and efficiently.  Applications
don't have to do anything special.  Of course, hacker-types love it even
more because they can do other things while compiling or downloading...

As for multimedia, I think the word is overused.  I gave a couple of 
presentations a few weeks ago that were done with AmigaVision and shown
on a video projector.  All I used were still images and those neat fades,
and it was effective enough.  I could have gone for animation, sound, etc.
but it wasn't worth the extra time to do it.  When people say "multimedia"
these days, they usually mean "video".  Obviously the Amiga is a good choice
for this...

--
Eric Giguere                                       giguere@csg.UWaterloo.CA
           Quoth the raven: "Eat my shorts!" --- Poe & Groening