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From: Invader@cup.portal.com (Michael K Donegan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Why do application partitions exist?
Message-ID: <39068@cup.portal.com>
Date: 9 Feb 91 05:25:21 GMT
References: <1991Feb5.182501.4325@wam.umd.edu>
  <1991Feb6.085236.15677@sol.UVic.CA>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 18

Anyone who thinks this is a great idea should buy an MS-DOS machine
and run Windows.  Then they can experience their application degrading
when another program is running because it is hogging up all the
memory.  They can enjoy the long swap times in switching between
applications.  They can thrill when their program that runs fine
on one machine completely chokes on another.

It is a pain to have to set the partition size, especially if you need more
in the middle of something else, but the alternative is just as painful if
not more.  At least this way apps can be tuned to a known quantity.  When
the developer tells you that you need 1M to run, it probably means that he
tested it that way and that your 1M partition is not going to be 
significantly different.

If I don't have a real paging system with protection, I'll take the Mac
multifinder scheme any day.  Memory is cheap these days.

	mkd