Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Neal Nelson Benchmarks
Message-ID: <2135@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 23 Feb 90 14:13:25 GMT
References: <196@zds-ux.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 21

In article <196@zds-ux.UUCP> gerry@zds-ux.UUCP (Gerry Gleason) writes:
| I have just been going through a bunch of marketing hype for Neal
| Nelson.  He claims that his "Business Benchmark" measures how
| well machines perform on "tasks like word processing, spread sheets,
| database management, accounting, programming and CAD," but I have
| never seen anything that backs this up with analysis or real data.

  I've been doing benchmarks for years (about 25) and I will say that
used carefully I am pretty happy with the NN suite. I have run extensive
test and live loads on machines he has tested, and my results are close
to his.

  The secret to any benchmark is using it to predict the future, and
depends on both how well the benchmarks represent your load, and how
well you *think* the benchmarks represents your load. I usually suggest
that NN be used to select a few final machines for additional testing,
which is about all I claim for my own suite.

-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
            "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me