From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!ihps3!ixn5c!inuxc!pur-ee!david
Newsgroups: net.general
Title: Re: How can they do this - (nf)
Article-I.D.: pur-ee.611
Posted: Fri Oct 22 18:25:58 1982
Received: Sat Oct 23 05:03:11 1982

#R:burdvax:-24200:pur-ee:5400010:000:1406
pur-ee!david    Oct 22 18:02:00 1982

It seems like that will be "the shape of things to come".  Here at
just the Purdue EE school, we have some freshman programming classes
of 200-300 people. It is almost impossible for an EE to go through
school without programming in at least 5 classes.  Most of the
processing time on the system is spent editing files.  You don't
need a Vax to edit most files!  Yet we see outrageous load and
user averages due mostly to file manipulation.  To solve part of the 
problem, The school bought a second Vax and moved half the accounts 
to the new machine.  The problem we now see is people connecting to 
one machine from the other because they see the first open terminal 
and not necessarily the one their account is on.  Consequently, instead 
of having half the users on each machine, we have the same number of 
users on TWO machines (with a good percentage being those connect to the
other Vax).  

As a student I wouldn't like purchasing any equipment that I'll
hardly use after I leave.  But the trade-off could be it will
improve my turn-around when I need it. And if I didn't like the
PC, I could sell it to some unsuspecting freshman.  

I'd imagine in the specific case, a company will open up that will
rent PC's to students much the same way companies rent dorm
refrigerators, anyway.

And The nice thing is I'm graduating and I won't have to worry about
it after May!

Dave White
pur-ee!david