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From: mykes@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Mike Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: How do we change the scheduler? (Was Re: Multitasking at home...)
Message-ID: <1991Jan19.035418.15192@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
Date: 19 Jan 91 03:54:18 GMT
References: <42609@ut-emx.uucp> <1991Jan18.050529.13101@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <42731@ut-emx.uucp>
Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix
Lines: 52

In article <42731@ut-emx.uucp> awessels@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Allen Wessels) writes:
>In article <1991Jan18.050529.13101@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> mykes@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Mike Schwartz) writes:
>
>>By the way, every program on my hard disk is as good as a desk accessory.
>>I can have a million desk accessories ready to use and still use ALL of
>>my Amiga's memory for any other purpose.  My Amiga never has just "passable"
>>performance due to the number of programs I have available.
>
>Well, I was talking about an 8Mhz 68000 machine there.  One thing people may not
>realize is that Desk Accessories on the Mac do not take up processing time 
>unless they've been run.  Think of them as a menu of small (generally) programs
>you can run at any time without worrying about memory fragmentation issues etc.
>(I know, the Amiga can do this with any program...)  I have 60 DAs available and
>it could be 200 and still not affect the performance of the machine materially.
>
Do Desk Accessories take up RAM or not?  You can fit 200 desk accessories in 
memory at the same time?  (Just a question ...).  Also, programs that reside
entirely on disk require NO cpu time either.  I could also point out that
the standard Amiga is 7.14 MHz and is slower than your 8MHz machine.  However,
the copper and blitter give it an effective rate of about 10MHz while the
Mac has wait states that reduce it's 8MHz to effectively about 5, but even
as it may be, the 7.14 MHz machine has more than passable performance all
the time.

>>I typically run all these inits, plus have a resident assembler, editor,
>>and linker, run DPaint with 10 screens of animation, and still have
>>2.89 Megs of RAM free.  I have not had to quit an application to make more
>>free memory for another application in years.
>
>I wish I could do in my 5 megs what you can do in yours.  The Mac has never been
>the leanest machine in terms of price, memory, or CPU efficiency.  Its strength
>has always been in putting a fairly powerful interface in the hands of people
>who otherwise probably wouldn't be using computers, or would be using them as
>"1-2-3 boxes" or "Word boxes".  Some people shouldn't be allowed within 10 feet
> of a CLI.

Unfortunately, there will be 80Million CLI based PC machines by 1992, and
ALL those people seem to be able to deal with the CLI.  The Amiga is a 
natural machine for all those people familiar with MS-DOS because the CLI
environment is similar enough on the Amiga and because you can run more than
one at a time.  I would like to think, however, that the Amiga provides a 
little more than the PC does in the way of user interface (WIMP), and a lot
more in terms of standard configuration (copper, blitter, 4096 colors, mouse,
multitasking, (and a list that goes on and on and on and on... ).

The only thing that is keeping the Amiga from being the best 1-2-3 or Word
box is Lotus and Microsoft.  You can also blame CBM...

We both agree that the Mac would be nicer if you could do more in less
memory.  We also both agree that the Mac has a superior user interface,
even if it requires significant effort to program and is near impossible
to port from.