Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!purdue!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!Thomas_E_Zerucha From: Thomas_E_Zerucha@cup.portal.com Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: Put up or shut up (was Re: Atari-bashing) Message-ID: <13095@cup.portal.com> Date: 31 Dec 88 19:22:29 GMT References: <474@ur-cc.UUCP> <6847@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <910@hudson.acc.virginia.edu> <1537@plx.UUCP> <2167@nunki.usc.edu> <264@ultb.UUCP> <12835@cup.portal.com> <2216@nunki.usc.edu> <13011@cup.portal.com> Organization: The Portal System (TM) Lines: 21 If the STacey (aka portable ST) has an impact it might be because there will be a lot more applications for an inexpensive but portable computer with a lot of power. I would like to have one now - I brought in my ST to work, and can do a lot of nice things having it cross between the PC and Mac worlds. But my setup (worse since I have the old ST with the wire nest in back) doesn't travel well. If you have seen those Macintosh ads where people bring their computer to work with them you may get the idea. Several people "lug" their Macintoshes in and out regularly. The ST could displace some of that. Remember that adding portability creates NEW applications where they didn't exist before, and generally enhances the ST's strong points. The only hardware complaint which I may have for the ST is that it isn't very easy to expand. Their video memory is limited to 4 Megabytes (which is a lot, but applications grow to fill up available capacities). There is no expansion bus and only a single slot on the Megas. You can't easily gain resolution (If I wanted to create something that did 16 million colors I would have to redo the hardware almost completely). And faster processors have the same problem. These are lessened to a great extent since the ST has so much built in, and that is done fairly well (separate processor for mouse and keyboard, DMA (though the FIFO's and byte sized sector register could be done better), and all the ports).