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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ucla-cs!sdcrdcf!trwrb!cadovax!keithd
From: keithd@cadovax.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Mac vs. Amiga (vs. ST)
Message-ID: <1355@cadovax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-Jan-87 17:02:18 EST
Article-I.D.: cadovax.1355
Posted: Tue Jan 27 17:02:18 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Jan-87 04:25:25 EST
References: <8515@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <636@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <8392@watrose.UUCP>
Reply-To: keithd@cadovax.UUCP (PUT YOUR NAME HERE)
Organization: Contel Business Systems, Torrance, CA
Lines: 37
Keywords: Mac, Amiga, ST
Xref: watmath comp.sys.amiga:1789 comp.sys.mac:1029 comp.sys.atari.st:1165

In article <8392@watrose.UUCP> jafischer@watrose.UUCP (Jonathan Fischer) writes:
>
>In article <636@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> ralph@ATRP.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Amiga-Man) writes:
>> ...  [talks about advantages of Amiga]
>>- A true multitasking OS. I find this feature very important.
>
>	I'm really curious: just how great is multitasking?  I.e., how much do
>you, the typical Amiga owners, use this feature?  Even on Unix I find that the
>only thing I consistently use '&' for is printing, and on my ST I have a wide
>range of print spoolers to choose from.

I use it frequently when I'm telecommunicating.  Uploading and Downloading of
software is a relatively boring and time consuming event.  While my terminal
emulator is doing this, I'm off in another window working on something else.
As long as I'm not doing down and dirty debugging of new software that is
prone to crash the machine, It works pretty good, and I do this quite often.
Other things that are handy, are formatting disks in background while tele-
communicating, loading up ram disks, etc.  I'm spoiled now, and wouldn't want
to do without it.


>cycle, the speed of Megamax compile-time, coupled with a RAMdisk, makes multi-
>tasking a 'yeah it would be nice, but not utterly world-stopping' luxury.

Well, it's not world-stopping, but I sure miss it when I'm on a machine that
dosen't have it.

>and is it worth the slow-down in execution?  Even though I would really _like_
>it, would I really use it that much?

As Matt mentioned, there is not that much slowdown, many programs spend an
awful lot of time doing nothing, or waiting for something to happen, which
dosen't take up any CPU at all.

Keith Doyle
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