Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!hplabs!utah-cs!halff
From: halff@utah-cs.UUCP (Henry M. Halff)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Buying: PC vs. the Mac
Message-ID: <3771@utah-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-May-86 08:54:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: utah-cs.3771
Posted: Thu May  1 08:54:10 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 3-May-86 19:11:47 EDT
References: <67900002@ism780>
Organization: Halff Resources, Inc.
Lines: 55
Summary: Which one is the real machine?

In article <67900002@ism780>, jimb@ism780 writes:
> We're a two-computer household -- I have an XT and my wife as a 512K Mac.
> 
> ***********
> 
> At the time I bought my XT (one year ago) and even now, it was absolutely the
> correct choice for someone with my profile of usage.  Writing.  LOTS of
> writing.  The need for letter quality printing, REAL letter quality, not all
> this "near" letter quality crap that's insufficient for the standards of many
> editors; a printer with a cut-sheet feeder to handle letterhead and
> envelopes -- the issue of envelopes skewering laserprinters; and a
> professional, heavy-duty word-processing program.
> 
> By my standards, the WP program needs to be something like Word Perfect or
> Multimate.  Microsoft Word is an abomination that's not much better than
> Wordstar; MacWrite is fine for writing Aunt Hepzibah or tooling out a term
> paper, but that's about it.
> 
> Finally, Word Perfect is supposed to be coming out on the Mac at the end of
> the year.  There are some kludges that now allow the Mac to use a NEC
> printer, though I don't know about nuances such as cut-sheet feeder codes.
> (Anyone out there have any experience?)
> 
> Only with the good WP program and access to a quality printer will the Mac
> become a reasonable option for users like me, and the market for users far
> outnumbers the market for hackers.

Gee--We also have a Mac, which my wife uses, and an XT, which I use.
However, she is the heavy writer in the business.  I use WordPerfect and
find it a superb word processor, but I would find it difficult to use it
or any other word processor available for the XT to produce a 100 page
fully illustrated training manual within a week's time.  This kind of
job is almost routine on the Macintosh.

True, if you're putting out a lot of correspondence to different folk on
different letterheads, a laserwriter could be awkward, but even with
WordPerfect on my XT, I often turn to a device known as a typewriter to
produce envelopes, rather than going to the trouble of changing paper in
my printer.  An adequate, if expensive, Macintosh solution is the
purchase of an Imagewriter II dedicated to envelopes.

True, neither Write nor Word can hold a candle to WordPerfect, but if I
had to produce a lot of written material in a variety of forms (charts,
overheads, drawings, illustrated papers, flyers, etc.), I'd pick a Mac
everytime.  And, I'd pick a Mac for spreadsheets, databases,
communications, and just about any mainline application.

So why do I use an XT?  Three reasons--

1.  I got it cheap, but more importantly,
2.  My clients use IBMs, but more importantly,
3.  You can write programs for the XT far more easily than for the Mac.
-- 
Henry M. Halff                                       Halff Resources, Inc.
halff@utah-cs.ARPA                 4918 33rd Road, N., Arlington, VA 22207