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From: jms@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Joe Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Thad and me
Summary: Totally resident programs are faster
Message-ID: <1453@tardis.Tymnet.COM>
Date: 22 Jan 91 04:26:47 GMT
References: <1991Jan13.211613.7825@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <38017@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: jms@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Joe Smith)
Organization: BT Tymnet, San Jose, CA
Lines: 29

In article <38017@cup.portal.com> thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes:
   mykes@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Mike Schwartz)
>	Jay works at Tymnet where they have a large Sun network.  He is
>	constantly telling me how his Sun is a single-tasking computer.  I
>	point out to him that Unix is a multitasking operating system, but he
>	says despite this that what you get is effectively singletasking.  He
>	has a comparable Sun machine to my Amiga - 68030 with 8MB of RAM.  He
>	says that whenever he executes a command in a ] shell or depth
>	arranges windows, the machine does not accept input for a long time
>	(like 15 seconds).  He says he likes the Amiga much better because you
>	can resize a window and the response is zippy.
>If he's running SunOS and X, then I understand his comments, but it sounds to
>me more like he's on a 3/50 or a 3/60 (for which his complaints are valid).

A few years ago Tymnet decided that having a Sun-3/50 on everyone's desk
was a great idea.  Unfortunately we're talking about a 15MHz 68020 with
no swap disk and only 4 meg RAM.  Running SunOS-4.0.3 with less than 10 megs
is a big lose - swapping over a busy Ethernet takes forever.

A little old A2000 with a 7MHz 68000 and 1 meg RAM ran rings around such
Suns, even when the Amiga was running off of floppies.

Just another example of how a completely memory-resident window manager
system will always outperform a swappable window manager system.
-- 
Joe Smith (408)922-6220 | SMTP: jms@tardis.tymnet.com or jms@gemini.tymnet.com
BT Tymnet Tech Services | UUCP: ...!{ames,pyramid}!oliveb!tymix!tardis!jms
PO Box 49019, MS-C51    | BIX: smithjoe | CA license plate: "POPJ P," (PDP-10)
San Jose, CA 95161-9019 | humorous dislaimer: "My Amiga 3000 speaks for me."