Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!glacier!jbn
From: jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Amiga or PC-AT ?
Message-ID: <17611@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: 5 Aug 88 03:43:35 GMT
References: <1820006@hpuamsa.UUCP> <554@gort.cme-durer.ARPA> <356@uwslh.UUCP>
Reply-To: jbn@glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 43


     The Amiga is the world's greatest toy computer.  

     Fundamental problems:

     1.  The screen is TV resolution.  This is not good enough for text.   
         You can see the dots all too well.  It's like using a 1975-vintage
	 glass TTY, but with color.  

     2.  Commodore doesn't really believe in hard disks.  It's like the
	 early days of the Mac; everything is diskette-oriented and most
	 disks seem to be bootable.  With a certain amount of pain and anguish,
	 disk vendors have been able to bolt on hard disks.  This works
	 about as well as it did on the Mac before Apple offered a hard disk.
	 I hear that Commodore is now supporting hard disks in the new
	 (real soon now) release of AmigaDos.

     3.  The mechanical and electrical interfaces for the Amiga 1000 and
	 500 are terrible.  In theory, one can add on peripherals.  The
	 general comment is "one add-on will work, two may work, three
	 won't work".  In other words, add-on memory and a hard disk 
	 will probably be flakey.  Some add-ons only work right with
	 the covers removed.  This does not apply to the Amiga 2000,
	 which has slots.

     4.  The product is positioned as a high-end toy.  Most of the
	 available Amiga software is games.  On the other hand, there
	 are no serious spreadsheet programs for the Amiga.  The major
	 networking vendors do not support the Amiga (although schemes  
	 involving the MS-DOS compatibility box have been made to work.)
  	 The one vendor in Palo Alto that still handles the Amiga
	 now relegates them to the back of the shop, and has removed all
	 Amiga material from the store window.
     
     5.  The file system is on the fragile side.  It is all too easy to
	 destroy a disk.  This applies to both fixed and removable
	 media.  (Known bug: invoke the system call DELAY with a 0
	 argument and track 40 of a disk will be trashed!)


It's a fascinating machine.  I have an Amiga 1000 myself.  But if you have
only one machine, it probably shouldn't be an Amiga.

					John Nagle