Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!dsinc!bagate!cbmvax!daveh From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Subject: Re: Amiga vs. Mac Message-ID: <19875@cbmvax.commodore.com> Date: 14 Mar 91 21:57:18 GMT References: <1991Mar10.192823.30103@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <1991Mar10.204119.22113@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> <4210.27db9aac@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu> <1131@caslon.cs.arizona.edu> <4232.27de369d@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu> Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA Lines: 54 In article <4232.27de369d@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu> rlcollins@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu (Ryan 'Gozar' Collins) writes: >In article <1131@caslon.cs.arizona.edu>, dave@cs.arizona.edu (Dave P. Schaumann) writes: >> In article <4210.27db9aac@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu> rlcollins@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu (Ryan 'Gozar' Collins) writes: >>>To the market the A500 and classic is geared to, speed is not an issue, >> Bull. Speed is *always* an issue. Period. That is why reseach money is >> constantly being spent on hardware and algorithm development. Motorola could >> probably sell the 68040 for an order of magnatude (or more!) less if anyone >> wanted a 1Mhz 68040. >But people buying a Classic or A500 are not going to be doing to much CPU >extensive tasks. Speed is always an issue to SOME people. From the manufacturer's point of view, that's important, since many folks are buying now and thinking about the future. You will ultimately spend more money on the software than the hardware and knowing that some 25MHz 68030 or whatever system is available makes the choice of a 7MHz 68000 system that much more attractive. Many people are far more concerned with price over power -- not everyone can afford the cost of a compact car for their computer system. >> If someone tells you the speed of his computer is not an issue, he is >> either such a neophyte user that he has yet to tax the CPU of his computer, >> or he is lying. Or he/she has other concerns that override that of speed. Like the cost factor that I mentioned. Not everyone will tax the speed of their system -- my Mom, for instance, is perfectly happy doing wordprocessing and filing on her C128, even though there are much faster computers around. >Of course I would love to have 16MHz 68000 and 4 megs in my ST, but I can't >afford it right now that I'm still in college. No joke. And to tell you the truth, I would have swam through beer with my mouth shut for something as powerful as an ST or A500 back when I was in college. I had an Exidy Sorcerer, with 60x30 character screen, 2.5MHz Z-80 with 32K of DRAM. The only available wordprocessor for it was primitive when compared to what we could use for free on the school's DEC-20s (Scribe, and a laser printing, back in '79). The main problem was that no one made an intelligent terminal emulator for the Exidy, and the dumb one was too dumb to run Emacs. So what I would up with as a game machine (I wrote all the games before starting college). Cheap computers today have reached a critical point, where the machine stops behaving like a toy and starts to behave like a computer. Even if it's too slow for every task, it is still far more capable than what most folks had 10 years ago, it's "over the hump", so to speak. -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy "What works for me might work for you" -Jimmy Buffett