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From: gary@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU (Gary Samad)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Initial Opinion of Amiga
Message-ID: <3920@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 17-Nov-86 15:44:54 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.3920
Posted: Mon Nov 17 15:44:54 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 17-Nov-86 21:40:10 EST
Organization: MIT EE/CS Computer Facility, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 85
Keywords: read the manual
Summary: Try reading the manual!


In article <939@blia.BLI.COM>, forrest@blia.BLI.COM (Jon Forrest) writes:
> I recently received an Amiga on loan from a computer book
> publishing company in order to test programs from a new
> Amiga book I am doing a technical review of. I'm doing
> the review even though I told them that I don't know anything
> about Amiga's.
> 
   ...
> many colors, the Amiga is pretty dismal. I deliberatly didn't look
> into the internal aspects of AmigaDos but base my opinion on
> user interface problems. I should also note that I mainly use
> the CLI interface.
> 
  If you're going to use the advanced user's interface, you better be an
advanced user!

> The first thing I noticed is that the Amiga doesn't use Control-S
> and Control-Q to stop and start output to the screen. Control-S
> does work but only carriage return seems to resume output. The
> XON/XOFF protocol is so common that I would hope that there is some
> good reason why Amiga doesn't use it.
> 
  If you had read the manual you would know that typing any character
suspends window output and either deleting it or hitting <RETURN> allows
output to resume.  Yes, using ^S and ^Q would be nice, but there IS a
normal way to do it!

> The next thing that bothered my is that the Amiga is SLOOOOOOW in
> performing tasks that a standard speed IBM PC can do much better.
> For example, running DIR is unacceptably slow. Yet, this is a very
> commonly run command. The CD command has the same problem.
> 
  Yes, tradeoffs have been made trading off directory access times for file
access times,  but doing a directory on the Amiga is no slower than doing
a directory on an IBM PC's floppy disk.  It appears to be slower because the
entire directory is read in and SORTED before printing it.  If you want
immediate response (and an unsorted dir) use list.

Also, last night I was doing some development on both my Amiga and IBM PC
sitting next to it (with a hard disk) and learned how really fast the Amiga
is.  I compiled and linked a 5000 line program in C on the PC and it took
30 minutes;  I compiled and linked a 25000 line C program on the Amiga and
it took 25 minutes!!  Don't tell me the Amiga is slow!

> What follows is a short list of other annoying features of the Amiga:
> 
> 1. The lack of wild card characters is a bother.
 Again, READ THE MANUAL.  You just didn't start using your IBM without
reading the manual did you?  Most commands use a wildcard syntax that is
both different (sometimes annoying) but much more powerful than the PC's.
It uses a regular expression syntax allowing you to look for any of a set
of characters, etc.  Read the manual for an explanation.

> 2. I couldn't find the command for removing a directory.
  Try delete.

> 3. The file system is very similar to Unix and MS-DOS. Why couldn't
> 	they use the same pathname syntax of one of these?
  Yes, the pathname differences are annoying, especially using / instead
of .. to refer to the parent directory and having no way to refer to the
current directory.

> 4. The amount of time it takes to respond to Control-C seems unpredictable.
> 	This is true even though I was running a compile which does I/O
> 	like crazy, which on the IBM is when Control-C's can be detected.
  Some programs simply ignore ^C.  Also, you should try ^D which is more
effective when you are running a batch file.

> When I read other people's submissions complaining about systems I know
> something about I often think to myself that the person who wrote
> the article was obviously suffering from a severe case of cranial-anal
> inversion. But, being in the same situation is a very enlightening
> experience.
> 
> Jon Forrest
> ucbvax!mtxinu!blia!forrest

Look, the mouse/windowing Workbench is meant to be used by people who
refuse to read the manuals.  If you choose to use the Advanced User's
interface, you better be an Advanced User!

FLAME OFF!

	Gary