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From: friedell%chimera@HARVARD.HARVARD.EDU (Professor Mark Friedell)
Newsgroups: mod.computers.ridge
Subject: general opinion from the user community
Message-ID: <8511212232.AA2359743@chimera.HARVARD.EDU>
Date: Thu, 21-Nov-85 17:32:05 EST
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I've had a 32C for almost 2 years and I have a love/hate relationship with
this machine.  For compute-bound jobs, the 32C is remarkably fast, but the
operating system is almost unbelievably poor at switching processes -- I'm
told that the problem lies in the memory-management scheme, but I don't know
for sure.

For developing software, the 32C could be wrong choice: the user interface
is just responsive enough for one (really, one!) user.  Two users get
very angry.  With three users you might just have to find some other time
to use the machine.

My 32C is on an ethernet with lots of other machines, including two Vax
11/780s and a bunch of Suns.  The 32C is faster than the 11/780 for many
compute-bound jobs (like the image-rendering work I do), but, considerably
less responsive than the Suns when two or more users ATTEMPT to run
interactive programs (like text editors).



Mark Friedell
Center for Research in Computing Technology
Harvard University
(617)495-5841