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From: braun@drivax.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: A different View of the value of OS/2 - it's better than UNIX
Message-ID: <2440@drivax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 24-Sep-87 15:44:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: drivax.2440
Posted: Thu Sep 24 15:44:17 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Sep-87 14:45:43 EDT
References: <494@parcvax.Xerox.COM> <961@looking.UUCP> <498@parcvax.Xerox.COM> <13212@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <1729@rti.UUCP>
Reply-To: braun@drivax.UUCP (Kral)
Organization: Digital Research, Inc.
Lines: 28

In article <1729@rti.UUCP> bcw@rti.UUCP (Bruce Wright) writes:
>It is not at all clear to me that _either_ OS/2 or Unix will amount to
>a hill of beans in the PC marketplace outside of niche markets...
>Multitasking is nice, but it's really most useful to support multi-user
>applications (hence LANs) or specialized applications requiring lots of
>horsepower and lots of user interaction *at the same time*.  The typical
>spreadsheet, word processor, terminal emulation program, or what have you,
>just doesn't have any _need_ for multitasking - it's not even in its domain.


This is the Jerry Pernoulle (sp?) perspective and I think it is just flag
*wrong*.  A glance at the plethora of ram resident software (and programs to
(control all of these) is proof.  More than just for print spooling, time
sharing is needed for *any* background task:  modem control, keyboard mapping,
etc.  At least suspended-task technology is required for the other things.  How
many times have you been in your spread sheet and needed to look up something
in another file?  How many times have you been editing your source file and
needed to look up the spelling of some constant in an include file? 

Ok, windowing will address a lot of this, whether it is in the application (the
editor) or the graphics system (GEM, Windows, etc).  But this type of resource
management belongs with the rest of the resource management:  In the OS, not in
the application level.

-- 
kral		408/647-6112		...{ism780|amdahl}!drivax!braun
"Dream lightyears...    Challenge miles...    Walk in steps"
DISCLAIMER: If DRI knew I was saying this stuff, they would shut me d~-~oxx