Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!AECLCR.BITNET!01659
From: 01659@AECLCR.BITNET (Greg Csullog)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Is this right?
Message-ID: <8904241544.AA21773@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 24 Apr 89 15:20:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 37

Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding of the 8088,
80286 and 80386 family is that the junior member (the 8088) requires memory
segmentation to work (i.e. 10 banks of 64K). Even if you have an 80286 or
an 80386, most codes out there are compiled to run on the 8088 and still
use the memory segmentation protocols. Therefore, even if you have an 80286
or an 80386, with these segmented codes, you cannot use the true power of the
processors - all you can take advantage of is the faster clock times. Is
this right? I also understand that Windows 286 and 386 DO take advantage of
the newer processors. Is this right? Seems to me, if you use segmented codes
on a 80286 machine, you're bound to have a lower performance standard than
a Mac or an ST with a 68000 and their codes which are not segmented. Is this
right?

The latest issue of Current Notes has an article by G. Louie of Sphere Inc.
berating the ST market for piracy. He says that the same title of a code in]
the PC market sells 40 - 100,000 copies a year but the ST only 15,000. Is he
looking only at the US market where there are millions of PCs as opposed to
a couple of hundred thousand STs? What are sales as a % of the market he is
selling in.

When I try to convince people to buy an ST, the most common reply I get back
is that the person wants a PC so he 'can get all his software from work'. Sure
lots of PC software is sold, but honestly, how many people do you know that
bought LOTUS, dBASE, Word Perfect for their home PC - I'll bet you >95% lifted
a copy from work! Same in the Mac world. No one I know actually bought Excel
or MS Word for their home Macs. Be fair, more piracy probably goes on in the
PC and Mac worlds. The difference is, the other guys have PCs or Macs at work
and buy software through their companies and take copies home. If you put
business purchased software sales aside, I'll also bet you that the ST has
a good track record for honest sales.

I own Publisher ST, Word Writer, LDW Power (total cost $CDN 418). The reason
I have these is because they are affordable. I bought my ST because I was
committed to being legitimate with my software and I could not afford PC or Mac
software. For the record, I also bought OSS Pascal, Fast Basic (years ago),
Pascal TackleBox, ChessMaster, LS Larry, G+Plus, Multidesk, NeoDesk. Some of
us in the ST world like our machines and we buy the software to support it!