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From: woan@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc
Subject: Re: Which Computer?
Message-ID: <3625@zen.berkeley.edu>
Date: Tue, 8-Sep-87 01:00:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: zen.3625
Posted: Tue Sep  8 01:00:48 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Sep-87 01:06:19 EDT
References: <9098@brl-adm.ARPA> <77800008@uiucdcsp>
Sender: news@zen.berkeley.edu
Reply-To: woan@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Ronald S. Woan)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 31
Keywords: IBM not so bad...

In article <77800008@uiucdcsp> gillies@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>
If he's at an engineering school, they
might have many IBM PCs in *his* department.
>
>As a professional programmer, I would personally buy a Macintosh
>because the operating system software is much better.  
>standard PCs right now, and clones are being heavily discounted.
>Almost all Macs sold today can be expanded with a large display, many
>megabytes of memory (PCs can't do this), Hard Disk, and supercharging
>68020 boards.  Mac hardware has never been more tempting.

As a student at a major engineering school with an original IBM-AT I
would have to differ with this assessment. MSDOS is a wonderful operating
system that closely resembles UNIX. 32-bit processor boards are now
available at relatively low costs. Using one from Definicon, you can run
Autocad (the leader in CAD software) at speeds faster than top-of-the-line
Sun workstations. You must also consider the wide availability of public
domain software and compilers for IBM's. How many LISP, ADA, or even good
Fortran compilers do you see for the MAC.

Again, I must agree the point is moot if the college is all using Macintoshes.
The most important thing is to be able to run the programs used for the classes.


Also if you have the bucks, why not go for  '386 system, i.e. one with no
wait states and a '387 coprocessor; that way you can knock the socks off
of just about anything. Just look at the benchmarks in Byte.

*********************************************************************************                      ramblings of a student in poverty                           *
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