Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ll-xn!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!fluke!moriarty
From: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: FullWrite Professional
Message-ID: <3825@fluke.COM>
Date: 19 May 88 22:36:13 GMT
References: <8805172016.AA09499@decwrl.dec.com>
Sender: news@tc.fluke.COM
Reply-To: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer)
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Lines: 55

In article <8805172016.AA09499@decwrl.dec.com> long@colors.dec.com (Now HE will ask the questions!) writes:
>Hi everyone,
>  DOESN'T IT BOTHER ANYBODY THAT IT WON'T FIT ON A FLOPPY UNLESS
>THE CODE RESOURCES ARE PACKED????!!!!?!?!?

Err... no.  Frankly, I think it would have been better to simply admit that
it won't run off of a floppy and get rid of the compression -- speeds up
boot-up.  Double Helix II works that way, as do other big programs.

Frankly, until Apple starts putting out 1.6 Meg quad-density disks, I think
you can pretty well assume that the Mac is becoming a hard-disk machine for
business and graphics/desktop publishing applications.  You can still run it
on floppies for games, WriteNow/MacWrite style work, etc.  But we did an
impromptu poll at a Mac dBUG (downtown Business User Group) meeting, and 90%
of the people using the Mac had a hard drive with it.  Of course, we have
fewer "home computer" members than most groups, due to the nature of dBUG's
charter, so that may not be a fair percentage for *all* Mac users.  I
realize there are a lot of students on the net who bought it through their
campus's educational program, and many of them use it without a hard drive.
But the business market does seem to consider the hard drive a requirement.
Of the 20 or so Macs at Fluke, I can think of only one old 512K model we
have that doesn't have a hard drive -- and it's hooked into a file server
via TOPS.

Bottom Line:  Fullwrite Professional NEEDS a hard disk.  In my opinion, it
also needs 2 Megs to work efficiently.  Ann Arbor (along with many others)
figured 1 Meg SIMMs and hard drives would be cheap and plentiful when
FullWrite came out.  They were half right... :-)

>  I've seen the demo version and it doesn't look THAT much more capable
>than Word to justify an executable of that size.  

Major difference of opinion there, but I think FW's features have been
documented well enough elsewhere.

>  I also understand that FWP doesn't even run on a 1MB Mac.  DOESN'T 
>THIS BOTHER ANYBODY EITHER???!?!!?

If I were in Ashton-Tate's marketing group, it'd bother me.  As someone who
has 2.5 Megs and wants the power word processing FW can supply, no, it
doesn't.  If I were someone with 1 Megabyte of RAM (and a hard disk!), it'd
be time to ask myself a question: is the increased functionality of
FullWrite worth the cost of more RAM?

>  Seems like it could use just a little code optimization.  :-).

Ah, the hardware engineer's answer to everything. :-) "Write it in assembly
code -- that'll do it!"

             "But like the Good Book says... There's BIGGER DEALS to come!"
---
                                        Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
INTERNET:     moriarty@tc.fluke.COM
Manual UUCP:  {uw-beaver, sun, microsoft}!fluke!moriarty
CREDO:        You gotta be Cruel to be Kind...
<*> DISCLAIMER: Do what you want with me, but leave my employers alone! <*>