Future Shock- Microsoft's secret appeal
Chris Johnson
The other day, I suddenly realized something about Microsoft's
popularity that to my mind is an important point: MS monopoly is a
reassuring concept to some.
You won't necessarily hear people saying so outright, but the idea of a
benevolent monopoly taps directly into Alvin Toffler's notions of 'future
shock' and 'neophobia'. What Microsoft offers is not innovation! They
offer _safety_ from innovation, and a promise that if you commit to them
they will be there, in perpetuity, and a promise that everybody else is
also using Microsoft, meaning that you won't be 'stranded on the fringe of
technology'.
In this light, even the foundation of DOS in Win95 is a reassuring
thing. The usefulness of a thing isn't at issue here- it is the
implication that a computer system is solidly linked to history, solidly
established in the present, and will remain predictable and supported in
recognizable form in future. This is why the greatest insult from a
MS-follower is '*fill in blank* is dead!' (or dying, or not long for this
world). To one who has bought into this Microsoft promise, the very idea
of moving to a new computing paradigm is terrifying and unacceptable.
Everything must remain the same- incremental improvements are preferable
to quantum leaps. If quantum leaps are being practiced by another
developer/platform, such as the cross-platform OpenDoc or the
platform-independent Java, they are dismissed out of hand as trivial.
Attempts by Microsoft to co-opt such technologies and water them down into
mere ActiveX parts or whatever are welcomed by the faithful- it is
reassuring because the threateningly new technology is reduced to an
unthreatening, safe, weaker form.
This is a real issue, and reading MS hype about new unique MS stuff is
_not_ going to tell you about this underlying subtext. People constantly
attack MS for stealing everything not nailed down too firmly... consider
that this total lack of innovation is subconsciously reassuring to many
people. The subtext is 'Okay, so this is solid, proven stuff. Since it is
Microsoft, that makes it even solider and more proven, and it can now be
depended on to be around forever.'
The irony is that Microsoft is not capable or interested in building
programming concepts that will be stable. Microsoft is more likely than
any other software company to introduce 'novelties' that force upgrades of
software and eliminate the perceived benefits of 'stability'. Their motive
is never the dispassionate one of advancing the technology- after all,
they are not accustomed to innovating, they buy other companies and
integrate them. ('Integrate' is another key buzzword, as it implies smooth
functioning within the existing framework, rather than a quantum leap into
uncharted territory.)
Indeed, the most common reaction of MS supporters to a undeniable
innovation, a true quantum leap, is outright denial and claims that 'this
can be done with DOS' or some such claim. The innovation is reduced to a
weaker functionality that can be accomplished with MS solutions, and any
implications of deeper functionality are firmly ignored.
Many Microsoft supporters are openly proud of MS's ruthlessness. They
find the notion of a vast, powerful company whose side they are on
reassuring. It does not occur to them that Microsoft is not precisely on
_their_ side- they see it as being on Microsoft's side, as supporting the
reduction of the computer industry to non-threatening, simple terms.
The emphasis on 'the largest software base' can be seen as clinging to
a structure that will not change or be rendered useless- in spite of
Microsoft's attempts to render this previous software useless so new
software can be sold. In this light, the reality that most of that
software base is 3.1 or DOS takes on new meaning, becomes a powerful
anchor to depend on.
With all this in mind, ways to attack Microsoft become obvious.
Claims of new innovation, even quantum leap innovation such as OpenDoc
and Java, take on lesser importance. The new concepts are automatically
rejected, or diminished to comprehensible form.
The key is implying a more solid foundation than Microsoft can offer,
and this is entirely possible. Microsoft never stops making its products
obsolete, and this is a betrayal of their hidden promise... many other
computer solutions are able to remain familiar and useful throughout long
lifespans. One telling example is the Macintosh user interface, which has
kept the same core functionality for ten years. Another example is Unix,
which draws on a vast legacy and is worked inextricably into the framework
of the Internet.
The key point to emphasize is that Microsoft is a trap, easily replaced
by operating systems and applications that can be trusted to hold their
value. Microsoft cannot be trusted to hold its value, because in order to
keep growing they have to keep forcing people off of their familiar,
existing software and onto the latest Microsoft solution. If they cannot
do this by persuasion they will do it by force, creating new and
incompatible solutions, and claiming that failing to upgrade will leave
users crippled and impotent...
Which directly attacks the neophobia of Microsoft supporters, leaving
them vulnerable, feeling betrayed, and frustrated. They did not turn to
'Microsoft for all things' to be left behind: they wished to make a simple
decision and be taken care of for the forseeable future. Every MS upgrade
is a point of weakness, particularly if there is incompatibility with
previous systems. As Microsoft leans harder on its supporters and exerts
more force to move them, it becomes more vulnerable to a titanic backlash.
The antidote, the siren song that will convert Microsoft supporters, is
not innovation but safety, stability over time.
Depicting, say, OpenDoc as a quantum leap changing the entire nature of
computing, is likely to miss the point entirely. Depicting OpenDoc as a
system in which you can simply upgrade a part when necessary and leave the
rest of the system known and familiar _is_ a compelling argument.
Depicting, say, the Macintosh interface as an environment undergoing
radical and revolutionary change and becoming unrecognisable, is
dangerous. Depicting the Macintosh interface as an enviroment with
landmarks that are set in stone and not changed haphazardly _is_ a
compelling argument.
Depicting, say, Java as a revolutionary concept that will change the
way we use computers forever is dangerous. Depicting it as a foundation in
which you can bring familiar applications to unfamiliar platforms and be
able to use them immediately _is_ a compelling argument.
Failing to understand this is marketing suicide.
Jinx_tigr
(aka Chris Johnson)
If anyone is interested, this text is hereby public domain and can be
copied, put up on the WWW, printed, or whatever, with my blessing.
James A Miller
OS/2 bigot about to speak since this was cross-posted all over the Net
In message <jinx6568-090...@pm1a11.bratt.sover.net> -
jinx...@sover.net (Chris Johnson) writes:
:>
:> The other day, I suddenly realized something about Microsoft's
:>popularity that to my mind is an important point: MS monopoly is a
:>reassuring concept to some.
:> You won't necessarily hear people saying so outright, but the idea of a
:>benevolent monopoly taps directly into Alvin Toffler's notions of 'future
:>shock' and 'neophobia'. What Microsoft offers is not innovation! They
:>offer _safety_ from innovation, and a promise that if you commit to them
:>they will be there, in perpetuity, and a promise that everybody else is
:>also using Microsoft, meaning that you won't be 'stranded on the fringe of
:>technology'.
"aging platform"? Macs a "watered down PC"? I don't think so. M$ has taken
good ideas that of their own would rule the world and twisted them to suit
their designs. Windows isn't the most stable of platforms for Mission
critical tasks. Yes NT can take a beating but it takes a powere hardware base
to fully exploit it. Non-Intel platforms aside, if you take OS/2 and install
it on the sae box as NT it will be as stable plus perform faster and smoother.
It boils down to what gets the job done the best and M$'s products may not
satisfy that requirement the best.
:> In this light, even the foundation of DOS in Win95 is a reassuring
:>thing. The usefulness of a thing isn't at issue here- it is the
:>implication that a computer system is solidly linked to history, solidly
:>established in the present, and will remain predictable and supported in
:>recognizable form in future. This is why the greatest insult from a
:>MS-follower is '*fill in blank* is dead!' (or dying, or not long for this
:>world). To one who has bought into this Microsoft promise, the very idea
:>of moving to a new computing paradigm is terrifying and unacceptable.
:>Everything must remain the same- incremental improvements are preferable
:>to quantum leaps. If quantum leaps are being practiced by another
:>developer/platform, such as the cross-platform OpenDoc or the
:>platform-independent Java, they are dismissed out of hand as trivial.
:>Attempts by Microsoft to co-opt such technologies and water them down into
:>mere ActiveX parts or whatever are welcomed by the faithful- it is
:>reassuring because the threateningly new technology is reduced to an
:>unthreatening, safe, weaker form.
But Java and OpenDoc are open standards that are availble on OS/2, Mac and
Unix boxes, Hell, M$ had a hand in their development. Now that they see the
developers and ISV's like Java better than Visual C++ with all it's
un-documented calls, M$ gets in a hissy-fit and comes up with ActiveX. Which
is only availible for Win95/NT boxes. What happend to the openess of the Net
that ActiveX was created for... hmm???
:> This is a real issue, and reading MS hype about new unique MS stuff is
:>_not_ going to tell you about this underlying subtext. People constantly
:>attack MS for stealing everything not nailed down too firmly... consider
:>that this total lack of innovation is subconsciously reassuring to many
:>people. The subtext is 'Okay, so this is solid, proven stuff. Since it is
:>Microsoft, that makes it even solider and more proven, and it can now be
:>depended on to be around forever.'
If folks are really this squeamish then they should get out of the PC
industry.
<<<<snipped because the rest is about the same....>
:> Jinx_tigr
:> (aka Chris Johnson)
:> If anyone is interested, this text is hereby public domain and can be
:>copied, put up on the WWW, printed, or whatever, with my blessing.
The reason why comps and the Net are so fun and popular is the flexibily they
give us. We can run anything we want and connect it to all kinds of stuff and
talks to people across great distances in real time REGARDLESS of what they
are running. This is what drives humankind to a relative peace becusae we
create a fair and inviting infrastructre that doesn't care what you run as
long as it adhears to the same stand we all agreed on.
Making me go out and buy a particular OS or PC just because its software
displays the icon 2 pixels to the left and thats the way the ISV wants it is
trivial(and yea that's how I see all this browser nonsense). Rather make it
so the we have a standard that my OS/2 box can see and his Amiga, her Mac, and
the other guy's Win/NT box can all see in exactly the same way. Then I'll buy
your product.
This is what the industry should be about.
-James Miller
Bryan Seigneur
I liked this. I agree that trying to be all things to all people is
hurting
MS. Can there be a whole software monopoly?
The viability of the 'net PC' is proved by the fact that there are so
many dumb windows boxes out there which truly aren't real multipurpose,
versatile machines. The digerati is already soaked with PCs, and I
hope
to see them moving to a better power user's system like LInux. The only
major growth could be in a 'net PC' market.
Also, as MS pushes into the high end micro server world, they find their
possible competitors continually raising the very definition of
'high-end'.
MS also finds its toes nipped at (well, bitten off, with some rather
critically large pieces of calf tissue removed as well) by a very low
profile (multiple meanings) visitor to the scene.
So, as MS tries to move upscale and take over the entire industry, it
has left it's secure penninsula with only one frontier and is moving
inland, where it is surrounded on all sides.
Chris Johnson wrote:
>
> ... Which directly attacks the neophobia of Microsoft supporters, leaving
> them vulnerable, feeling betrayed, and frustrated. They did not turn to
> 'Microsoft for all things' to be left behind: they wished to make a simple
> decision and be taken care of for the forseeable future. Every MS upgrade
> is a point of weakness, particularly if there is incompatibility with
> previous systems. As Microsoft leans harder on its supporters and exerts
> more force to move them, it becomes more vulnerable to a titanic backlash.
>
> Jinx_tigr
> (aka Chris Johnson)
> If anyone is interested, this text is hereby public domain and can be
> copied, put up on the WWW, printed, or whatever, with my blessing.
--
Bryan Seigneur
Windows NT. How to make a 100 MIPS Linux
workstation perform like an 8 MHz 286 PC.
Fred Povey
In article <jinx6568-090...@pm1a11.bratt.sover.net>,
jinx...@sover.net (Chris Johnson) wrote:
> The other day, I suddenly realized something about Microsoft's
> popularity that to my mind is an important point: MS monopoly is a
> reassuring concept to some.
> You won't necessarily hear people saying so outright, but the idea of a
> benevolent monopoly taps directly into Alvin Toffler's notions of 'future
> shock' and 'neophobia'. What Microsoft offers is not innovation! They
> offer _safety_ from innovation, and a promise that if you commit to them
> they will be there, in perpetuity, and a promise that everybody else is
> also using Microsoft, meaning that you won't be 'stranded on the fringe of
> technology'.
As much as this says about Microsoft, it says more about users:
* A big percentage of them like to be led. IBM used to have this role; now
Microsoft has it.
* As long as they're using what everybody else is using, they don't care
whether it's the best; it's more important that other people don't think
they're stupid.
* If they're going to have to learn this stuff, they would really, really
like it if the whole world would have ONE standard so that once they've
learned it, they're set for life (for example, people who invested a lot
of time in learning MS-DOS thinking it would last them forever, and then
being upset about the rest of the world going to graphical interfaces).
Evan D. Baer
In i think the wired interview with steve jobs, speaking of the whole
Microsoft thing, he made a reference to television, something along the
lines of "the tv people dont put crappy shows on the air because they are
dumb, they put them there because thats what people want to watch." The
same could be said for the software industry, microsoft puts what people
seem to want on the table.
This isnt just software, but the image, the reliabilty, even the <gasp>
hero in bill gates.
As cool as unix is, as cool as java is, as cool as whatever is, the end
result is that bill has won, and will continue to win. And i dont think
that they will lose the next round with the server/internet market.
Think about it, i mean most people really hate unix. Its pretty fucking
hard to use. NT is easy, have any of you looked at IIS? It may not be the
best, but you really can set it up in about 1/2 an hour. And not just
geeks can do it, practically anyone can.
Microsoft's lack of innovation, while critiziced, doesnt matter much when
you think of it like this. In fact, that dont really need to make their
stuff easy to develop for, since they sell most of the software that
their target market would use a computer for.
But, whatever. PCs and their users are kinda a lame crowd to deal with
anyways. Instead of no one ever lost their job buying IBM, its now no
one ever lost their job buying Microsoft.
Fred Povey (fpo...@erols.com)
wrote: :
: As much as this says about Microsoft, it says more about users:
Chris Johnson
Just as a sort of side note, this thread got me my first mailbomb attempt.
It was clearly modem-based in nature, consisting of over ten copies of
my original post sent back at me, evidently using a modem rather than some
high-powered T1 or something. Anybody else considering this ought to know
that it'll only jam my mailbox at around four megs. Anything further will
bounce, and all I have to do is telnet in to the Unix host and clear it,
something a friendly Unix-savvy college student showed me :)
Here is the mailbomb text- which, as I said, is nothing but my original
text sent to me something like 13 times. A very small mailbomb, I think,
by normal standards, merely 'annoyance level' and not worth any serious
retaliation. If anybody reading this is interested in a line of attack
that will hurt Microsoft, read more closely- I've seen some responses
which seemed to think I was advocating for Microsoft, which is quite
untrue and at least _one_ Wintel advocate understood this well enough to
try and put me out of action the only way he knew how (or at least bug me,
which didn't work).
Jinx_tigr
(aka Chris Johnson)
From: d...@vnet.net
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 1996 10:59:53 -0400 (EDT)
To: jinx...@sover.net
Subject: Re: Future Shock- Microsoft's secret appeal
Newsgroups:
comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.unix.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.sys.powerpc.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.sys.next.advocacy,comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Organization: Vnet Internet Access, Inc.
In article <jinx6568-090...@pm1a11.bratt.sover.net> you write:
The other day, I suddenly realized something about Microsoft's
popularity that to my mind is an important point: MS monopoly is a
reassuring concept to some.
You won't necessarily hear people saying so outright, but the idea of a
benevolent monopoly taps directly into Alvin Toffler's notions of 'future
shock' and 'neophobia'. What Microsoft offers is not innovation! They
offer _safety_ from innovation, and a promise that if you commit to them
they will be there, in perpetuity, and a promise that everybody else is
also using Microsoft, meaning that you won't be 'stranded on the fringe of
technology'.
In this light, even the foundation of DOS in Win95 is a reassuring
thing. The usefulness of a thing isn't at issue here- it is the
implication that a computer system is solidly linked to history, solidly
established in the present, and will remain predictable and supported in
recognizable form in future. This is why the greatest insult from a
MS-follower is '*fill in blank* is dead!' (or dying, or not long for this
world). To one who has bought into this Microsoft promise, the very idea
of moving to a new computing paradigm is terrifying and unacceptable.
Everything must remain the same- incremental improvements are preferable
to quantum leaps. If quantum leaps are being practiced by another
developer/platform, such as the cross-platform OpenDoc or the
platform-independent Java, they are dismissed out of hand as trivial.
Attempts by Microsoft to co-opt such technologies and water them down into
mere ActiveX parts or whatever are welcomed by the faithful- it is
reassuring because the threateningly new technology is reduced to an
unthreatening, safe, weaker form.
This is a real issue, and reading MS hype about new unique MS stuff is
_not_ going to tell you about this underlying subtext. People constantly
attack MS for stealing everything not nailed down too firmly... consider
that this total lack of innovation is subconsciously reassuring to many
people. The subtext is 'Okay, so this is solid, proven stuff. Since it is
Microsoft, that makes it even solider and more proven, and it can now be
depended on to be around forever.'
Which directly attacks the neophobia of Microsoft supporters, leaving
them vulnerable, feeling betrayed, and frustrated. They did not turn to
'Microsoft for all things' to be left behind: they wished to make a simple
decision and be taken care of for the forseeable future. Every MS upgrade
is a point of weakness, particularly if there is incompatibility with
previous systems. As Microsoft leans harder on its supporters and exerts
more force to move them, it becomes more vulnerable to a titanic backlash.
The antidote, the siren song that will convert Microsoft supporters, is
not innovation but safety, stability over time.
Depicting, say, OpenDoc as a quantum leap changing the entire nature of
computing, is likely to miss the point entirely. Depicting OpenDoc as a
system in which you can simply upgrade a part when necessary and leave the
rest of the system known and familiar _is_ a compelling argument.
Depicting, say, the Macintosh interface as an environment undergoing
radical and revolutionary change and becoming unrecognisable, is
dangerous. Depicting the Macintosh interface as an enviroment with
landmarks that are set in stone and not changed haphazardly _is_ a
compelling argument.
Depicting, say, Java as a revolutionary concept that will change the
way we use computers forever is dangerous. Depicting it as a foundation in
which you can bring familiar applications to unfamiliar platforms and be
able to use them immediately _is_ a compelling argument.
Failing to understand this is marketing suicide.
Jinx_tigr
(aka Chris Johnson)
If anyone is interested, this text is hereby public domain and can be
copied, put up on the WWW, printed, or whatever, with my blessing.
(quote strings removed because the server thought I was quoting a
previous post.. *grin* which I _was_ doing, wasn't I?)
kiy...@kiyoinc.com
In <4uk4i8$6...@ns2.phantom.com>, ev...@evolution.com (Evan D. Baer) writes:
..
>
> ... NT is easy, have any of you looked at IIS? It may not be the
>best, but you really can set it up in about 1/2 an hour. And not just
>geeks can do it, practically anyone can.
>
Whoa, whoa, Whoa! Stan came by the store yesterday and went on an IBM
tirade. In a few months, Warp and the Warp bonus pak IAK will have been
in GA for TWO YEARS.
Two years ago, IBM had a captive, fully functioning ISP, Advantis, with
drops worldwide, their own FTP, Browser, mail, telnet, dialer, etc., up
and running.
Completely integrated, operational, documented, running out of the box
with a couple clicks, so easy that anyone could click it up.
Who were the technical minds at IBM who designed and deployed this marvel?
Who were the marketing idiots at IBM who kept this a secret?
Why didn't we see ads, press releases, articles, about this two years
ago?
Even now, where are the national ads, "Advantis, Internet, unlimited access,
$19.95/month"? Why do we still have ads that associate IBM with a trip
to the dentist? What is Big Lou doing? Why isn't Steve Whithers in charge
of OS/2 promotion?
Compare this to Microsoft.
Microsoft has glued the NT dispatcher and file system onto W95
and renamed this hybred NT4.0. This is W96. This paste
job is the news of summer 1996?
Object Desktop on Warp/Merlin is a greater enhancement than slapping the
NT filesystem onto the back of W95. Only from Microsoft marketing.
..
Cory Hamasaki http://www.kiyoinc.com
Kiyo Design, Inc. OS/2 Newsletter & OS/2 Web Store
11 Annapolis St. (410) 280-1942
Annapolis, Md 21401 Tues-Sat 11-5
Chris Johnson
In article <4uk4i8$6...@ns2.phantom.com>, ev...@evolution.com (Evan D. Baer)
wrote:
> As cool as unix is, as cool as java is, as cool as whatever is, the end
> result is that bill has won, and will continue to win. And i dont think
> that they will lose the next round with the server/internet market.
Nope. Bill has only laid himself open for attack from all directions at
once, and managed to piss off almost everybody else in the industry in
doing so. Bill's products are no longer safe bets unless you do all your
computer shopping at Wal-Mart. Even then, you are spending a lot of money
on what is nothing more than disposable technology- and that's not true
throughout the industry.
As for the server market, even Apple can take him on there- evidently a
Quadra or weak Power Mac with WebStar can saturate a T1 which is all a
little, small server will have. For heavier jobs, you go with Unix, plain
and simple- somehow I don't think the Internet backbones are going to be
switching to NT so they can be at our dear Bill's mercy. The very thought
is ludicrous.
As for Java, Apple will be with the rest of the world on _that_ one,
and Bill can play with his ActiveX until hell freezes over for all the
difference it will make in serious OOP, platform-independent circles.
Bill loses. It's that simple.
Jinx_tigr
(aka Chris Johnson)
David Every
|In i think the wired interview with steve jobs, speaking of the whole
|Microsoft thing, he made a reference to television, something along the
|lines of "the tv people dont put crappy shows on the air because they are
|dumb, they put them there because thats what people want to watch." The
|same could be said for the software industry, microsoft puts what people
|seem to want on the table.
I understand what both statements are saying... and its a cop-out.
Its like saying I let my kids eat shit, drink alchohol and run rampant at
night because thats want they want. While it might have an element of
truth, it does not change that I have a moral responsibility.
When I write a program I have a responsibility to meet the consumers needs
AND desires AND to make sure the program is the best software I can
engineer (with certain practical limits). There is a balance there... one
that MS does not care about. They will intentionally engineer products
that are harder to use and more buggy, because they can market them
better. They REDUCE functionality, usability and reliability in the name
of sales - not a little but a LOT! They are either stupid or evil... or a
touch of both. I think they corporate culture gives them an arrogance
where they think its funny to pawn shit off on sheep (people) and get
rewarded for it. They have enough decent engineers in there to know better
han what they do.
|As cool as unix is, as cool as java is, as cool as whatever is, the end
|result is that bill has won, and will continue to win. And i dont think
|that they will lose the next round with the server/internet market.
In immature markets you can get away with what MS has. However markets
mature... sometimes in a few years, sometimes in decades, but eventually
people wise up. I think the generation that is growing up is much more
savvy than the last one.
The market already is becoming smarter. People do NOT upgrade
automatically - they weigh wether its good for them (especially
professionals). People are no longer always buying the most feature rich
application or most expensive ones - they are more likely to chose whats
right for them. People are becoming more willing to think for themselves
and challange others. The market is certainly not yet mature in the
U.S.... and we may have another decade before we get there... but we have
been growing. (For now the ratio of idiots to wise is too high....
probably 9:1.... which coincidentally happens to be the same ratio of PC
buyers to Mac buyers.... a relationship there? Maybe)....
|But, whatever. PCs and their users are kinda a lame crowd to deal with
|anyways. Instead of no one ever lost their job buying IBM, its now no
|one ever lost their job buying Microsoft.
And both statements were untrue and idiotic. IBM put more companies out of
buisiness than any other company in its time... the same can be said of MS
today. Nobody I've ever dealt with in this industry that got into bed with
MS has gotten out without feeling screwed.
Also - eventhough I hate MS and idiots that follow them blindly - I do not
think that MS has gotten quite as bad as IBM was... and there are still
more choices against MS than there was for IBM. (At least for now).
Should we point out when people are being stupid, and following each other
rather than thinking for themselves? Certainly! And it is more likely to
happen in the PC side than the Mac side (but exists in both).
--
David K. Every
MacKiDo Warrior - The Power of the Macintosh Way!
--
©1996 DKE. Non-exclusive, royalty free license to distribute is granted to any service provider except Microsoft. By distributing this, Microsoft agrees to pay $1,000 per posting.
Nathan Urban
> As for the server market, even Apple can take him on there- evidently a
> Quadra or weak Power Mac with WebStar can saturate a T1 which is all a
> little, small server will have.
I beg to differ.. they have the throughput, but I wouldn't say that
Apple can take NT in terms of servers. Last year at my summer job I
ran WebStar on a PowerMac (I forget the specs, but it had 24 MB of
RAM), and performance was terrible. The local Mac guru said it was due
to the MacTCP implementation (maybe they've fixed it since then,
though). Throughput was fine, but it took forever to set up / tear
down TCP connections. Very Bad when you're trying to serve HTTP. It
would spend several seconds each time "Connecting to host" before any
pages finally loaded.. on that kind of hardware it should have been
instantaneous for a little 2K page over the LAN. Things were even
slower trying to access it over the Internet. (Not to mention that DNS
lookups on my desktop Mac seemed to be slower than they should be.) The
Mac guru also shut off File Sharing; apparently that was killing
Internet performance for some reason. (Very inconvenient for me, since
that meant I had to use the console, which was locked in their
classified room for various reasons, and I didn't have a clearance..)
I was annoyed that they blew all that money on an expensive PowerMac
when they could have got a cheap PC running Linux and had better server
performance. (Not to mention a better software infrastructure for a
network server.) I've never tried NT, but I'm going to guess that its
TCP/IP can't possibly be as bad as MacTCP.
--
Nathan Urban | nur...@vt.edu | Undergrad {CS,Physics,Math} | Virginia Tech
Louis M. Pecora
In article <jinx6568-090...@pm1a11.bratt.sover.net>,
jinx...@sover.net (Chris Johnson) wrote:
> The other day, I suddenly realized something about Microsoft's
> popularity that to my mind is an important point: MS monopoly is a
> reassuring concept to some.
> You won't necessarily hear people saying so outright, but the idea of a
> benevolent monopoly taps directly into Alvin Toffler's notions of 'future
> shock' and 'neophobia'. What Microsoft offers is not innovation! They
> offer _safety_ from innovation, and a promise that if you commit to them
> they will be there, in perpetuity, and a promise that everybody else is
> also using Microsoft, meaning that you won't be 'stranded on the fringe of
> technology'.
[cut a lot of well thought out stuff]
Rather nice analysis, Chris. I think this is what IBM was to the
corporate world before the desktop revolution: security*.
Not sure that MS could be "undone," but your ideas on presenting new
concepts as reassuring items, rather than brand new,
you-gotta-learn-all-new-stuff products, is one that deserves thought by
marketing.
Listening Sun? Apple (marketing is still alive there, no?)? IBM? Others?
-------------------------------------------
* Given the IBM analogy, you gotta ask how the desktop revolution happened
at all. I suspect by "the back door" until corporate IS types perceived
there was an advantage to having desktop computers. Namely, it gave MIS
types even more to do. Not that it necessarily gave companies any
advantage. That is still being debated in the light of the fact that
productivity per person has been approximately constant for decades.
--
Louis M. Pecora
pec...@zoltar.nrl.navy.mil
/* My views and opinions are not those of the U.S. Navy.
If you want those, you have to start a war. */
Luci Ellis
In article <4unrhs$t...@csugrad.cs.vt.edu>, nur...@vt.edu wrote:
> In article <jinx6568-110...@pm1a12.bratt.sover.net>,
jinx...@sover.net (Chris Johnson) wrote:
>
> > As for the server market, even Apple can take him on there- evidently a
> > Quadra or weak Power Mac with WebStar can saturate a T1 which is all a
> > little, small server will have.
>
> I beg to differ.. they have the throughput, but I wouldn't say that
> Apple can take NT in terms of servers. Last year at my summer job I
> ran WebStar on a PowerMac (I forget the specs, but it had 24 MB of
> RAM), and performance was terrible. The local Mac guru said it was due
> to the MacTCP implementation (maybe they've fixed it since then,
> though). Throughput was fine, but it took forever to set up / tear
> down TCP connections.
[snip]
> I was annoyed that they blew all that money on an expensive PowerMac
> when they could have got a cheap PC running Linux and had better server
> performance. (Not to mention a better software infrastructure for a
> network server.) I've never tried NT, but I'm going to guess that its
> TCP/IP can't possibly be as bad as MacTCP.
> --
Apparently the Open Transport TCP is better, and native code.
So I suspect the answer is: performance WAS terrible, but maybe it's time
to check again with current technology before you decide.
There's also the issue of security, but I defer to more knowledgable souls
on this.
Regards,
Luci
*********************************************************************
Luci Ellis eli...@dot.net.au
"Who needs horror movies when we have Microsoft"?
-- Christine Comaford, PC Week, 27/9/95
NB: The email address has changed but the old one still works.
Jerry Shekhel
kiy...@kiyoinc.com wrote:
:
: Microsoft has glued the NT dispatcher and file system onto W95
: and renamed this hybred NT4.0. This is W96. This paste
: job is the news of summer 1996?
Nonsense, Cory. NT architecture hasn't changed much in 4.0. Stop spreading
this "hybrid" FUD.
: Cory Hamasaki http://www.kiyoinc.com
--
Jerry J. Shekhel
je...@cybercom.net
, , ,
"Is maith liom Mi Mheain an tSamhraidh." - M. Ni Chobhthaigh
Joe Ragosta
In article <dke-110896...@adnline48.adnc.com>, d...@adnc.com (David
Every) wrote:
> In article <4uk4i8$6...@ns2.phantom.com>, ev...@evolution.com (Evan D. Baer)
> wrote:
>
> |In i think the wired interview with steve jobs, speaking of the whole
> |Microsoft thing, he made a reference to television, something along the
> |lines of "the tv people dont put crappy shows on the air because they are
> |dumb, they put them there because thats what people want to watch." The
> |same could be said for the software industry, microsoft puts what people
> |seem to want on the table.
>
> I understand what both statements are saying... and its a cop-out.
I agree with you. To go back to the TV / movies analogy, you've heard
many, many times that crap is what the customer wants. However, look up
the list of the 25 best selling movies of all time: Star Wars, Indiana
Jones, a bunch of Disney films, and a slew of other non-offensive films.
If you correct for inflation, it becomes even more obvious because the
Sound of Music and Gone with the Wind take the lead. Of the top 25 films
of all time (I checked this last year, so I can't be 100% sure that it
hasn't changed), only one was offensive to me (and I admit I'm a bit
conservative on this point).
The same is true of software. When consumers are given a choice between a
lousy program and a good one _with the same perceived functionality_, the
good one usually wins out. The problem is that they've been convinced that
crap like MS Office has more functionality than the good apps.
Rob Barris
In article <4uqdor$1...@orion.cybercom.net>, je...@cybercom.net (Jerry
Shekhel) wrote:
> kiy...@kiyoinc.com wrote:
> :
> : Microsoft has glued the NT dispatcher and file system onto W95
> : and renamed this hybred NT4.0. This is W96. This paste
> : job is the news of summer 1996?
> :
> Nonsense, Cory. NT architecture hasn't changed much in 4.0. Stop spreading
> this "hybrid" FUD.
BYTE seems to think it changed significantly - most notably with the
promotion of video drivers to supervisor-level as opposed to user-level
code. Whereas a faulty video driver could not crash NT before, now one
can. Clearly a different thing from what Cory said (which I disagree
with), yet a significant change just the same. Some people used to think
"DirectX for NT" was an oxymoron, yet that is the direction they are going
in.
Of course "buggy video drivers" are pretty rare on MS systems so it may
be a low risk thing :-p
Would anyone like to recommend the right group for this thread to go
on? Fortunately it seems to have stayed off of groups with "alt", "warez",
"2600", "folklore", and "destroy" in their titles.
Rob Barris
Quicksilver Software Inc.
rba...@quicksilver.com
* Opinions expressed not necessarily those of my employer *
kiy...@kiyoinc.com
In <4uqdor$1...@orion.cybercom.net>, je...@cybercom.net (Jerry Shekhel) writes:
>kiy...@kiyoinc.com wrote:
>:
>: Microsoft has glued the NT dispatcher and file system onto W95
>: and renamed this hybred NT4.0. This is W96. This paste
>: job is the news of summer 1996?
>:
>
>Nonsense, Cory. NT architecture hasn't changed much in 4.0. Stop spreading
>this "hybrid" FUD.
>Jerry J. Shekhel
OK, I'll go with that. The dispatcher and file system are unchanged,
the GUI has been warted on. It's still not a dramatic new product.
I was talking to the Silver Fox yesterday. If you recall, he's the old
programmer with the ALR Dual6 200 mHz who's cranking code on Win.
He started out by shaking his silver mane and cursing out M$.
"Cory", he said, "I was running the debugger and followed a thread.
That M$, I know why NT is so big and slow, everything goes
through layers of calls, every little thing, even the simpliest thing,
they're never sure if the data is right, it gets passed up and down and
down and down, until finally you get to an assembler routine that checks
the data."
The Fox also had a lot to say about M$ Visual C++, "What junk, if you're
writing another Word for Windows, it's perfect, but if you're trying to
do something in the least bit different, you're fighting the ap-wizards
all the way. Everything is oriented to this M$ way of displaying
data, this calls this window, it's all hierarchical, you can't free form
jump sidewards like in OS/2."
There it is, a super windows programmer, who built half of a
commercial Windows product, has a PhD, runs NT on a twin 200 mHz
Pentium-Pro monster, and everytime I see him, he's got yet another M$ is
sticking it to me story.
Cory Hamasaki Kiyo Design, Inc. http://www.kiyoinc.com
11 Annapolis St. OS/2 Web Store.
Annapolis, Md 21401 (410) 280-1942
Christopher Robato
In message <4uqdor$1...@orion.cybercom.net> - je...@cybercom.net
(Jerry Shekhel)13 Aug 1996 17:24:43 GMT writes:
:>
:>kiy...@kiyoinc.com wrote:
:>:
:>: Microsoft has glued the NT dispatcher and file system onto W95
:>: and renamed this hybred NT4.0. This is W96. This paste
:>: job is the news of summer 1996?
:>:
:>
:>Nonsense, Cory. NT architecture hasn't changed much in 4.0. Stop spreading
:>this "hybrid" FUD.
:>: Cory Hamasaki http://www.kiyoinc.com
:>Jerry J. Shekhel
:>je...@cybercom.net
:> , , ,
:>"Is maith liom Mi Mheain an tSamhraidh." - M. Ni Chobhthaigh
You mean a movement of USER and GDI modules from application space
to kernel space, plus all the accompanying rewrites and
modifications necessary to support this, and the fact that it
requires a new set of drivers, isn't considered "much".
Stop apologizing, Jerry.
Rgds,
Chris
>>>>** Sailor Moon Joins Team OS/2 **<<<<
FUD covers the city, turning millions into lemmings.
Serena and riends raise their shiny Warp CD ROMs.
"OS/2 Warp Power, Make Up!" The Sailor Team OS/2 girls
crash into the Red Moon palace. With moonlight beaming behind
their silhouettes, Sailor Moon threatens the evil
Queen Beryl Gates and the diabolical Windowsverse forces,
"In the name of I-B-Moon, I shall right FUD and that means you!"
[[[ cro...@kuentos.guam.net ]]]
Sangria
In article <elisha-1308...@news.dot.net.au>, eli...@dot.net.au (Luci Ellis) wrote:
>In article <4unrhs$t...@csugrad.cs.vt.edu>, nur...@vt.edu wrote:
>
>> I beg to differ.. they have the throughput, but I wouldn't say that
>> Apple can take NT in terms of servers. Last year at my summer job I
>> ran WebStar on a PowerMac (I forget the specs, but it had 24 MB of
>> RAM), and performance was terrible. The local Mac guru said it was due
>> to the MacTCP implementation (maybe they've fixed it since then,
>> though). Throughput was fine, but it took forever to set up / tear
>> down TCP connections.
>Apparently the Open Transport TCP is better, and native code.
>
>So I suspect the answer is: performance WAS terrible, but maybe it's time
>to check again with current technology before you decide.
Perhaps, but as <nurban> touched on it, performance is more than just
flooding the line (bandwidth) but also a question of latency. It's
possible that OT would improve the latency, but until we see some hard
numbers, I can only go by what I'm seeing:
Every single site who's documents that I have currently setup in
my proxy cache to automatically update which is responding from a
MacOS based web server is taking an inordinate amount of time.
Now this happening from one site I would most like suspect some link
between my site and their's. But when it is happening to *every*
site that is running MacOS based servers, spread all over the country,
I have to start suspecting something else. It's possible that none
of these sites are running with OT, but that sounds pretty farfetch
at this point--how long has OT 1.1 been available?
And *still* not one damn MacOS based server will support conditional
gets! This is not that hard, dammit! Just parse the request header,
convert the time to whatever format your file times are using, compare
the two and send the file down only if it's time is more recent.
The request header adheres to a very simple standard and it's ridiculously
easy to parse it--a first year CS student can figure out how to do this.
I have a feeling because the sites are sending every file every time
regardless how often the client visits or how frequently, the saturation
of the link is taking place a lot sooner than it has to...
-- Sang.
********************************************************
* Sang K. Choe san...@inlink.com *
* http://sangria.inlink.com/index.html *
* finger: sa...@sangria.inlink.com *
********************************************************
Matthew N. Reichman
In <pecora-1208...@lou-pecora.nrl.navy.mil> Louis M. Pecora wrote:
[snip]
> types even more to do. Not that it necessarily gave companies any
> advantage. That is still being debated in the light of the fact that
> productivity per person has been approximately constant for decades.
This is, I think, an always fascinating point. Does technology affect per
person's productivity? And how has technology helped anything? Granted
"anything" and "helped" can be viewed as subjective terms. Are there net
available studies on this?
My personal subj. op. is "no". Especially from a quality of life pov -
another debatable issue. When did "quality of life" become an issue anyway,
is there a rough date attached to that?
--
Be well,
Matthew Reichman
reic...@usc.edu
USC-CNTV
NeXTStep v.3.3 m68k
NeXTMAIL & MIME welcome
===============================================================
PGP key --> email w/ subject "request_PGP"
---------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Privacy Information --> http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/
Jerry Shekhel
Joe Ragosta (jrag...@dca.net) wrote:
: >
: > I understand what both statements are saying... and its a cop-out.
:
: I agree with you. To go back to the TV / movies analogy, you've heard
: many, many times that crap is what the customer wants. However, look up
: the list of the 25 best selling movies of all time: Star Wars, Indiana
: Jones, a bunch of Disney films, and a slew of other non-offensive films.
: If you correct for inflation, it becomes even more obvious because the
: Sound of Music and Gone with the Wind take the lead. Of the top 25 films
: of all time (I checked this last year, so I can't be 100% sure that it
: hasn't changed), only one was offensive to me (and I admit I'm a bit
: conservative on this point).
:
: The same is true of software. When consumers are given a choice between a
: lousy program and a good one _with the same perceived functionality_, the
: good one usually wins out.
I agree that good products *eventually* win out over lousy ones. If MS was
nearly as bad as everyone here says, it would have been seen as such and
dumped by the public years ago. The truth is obviously not that simple.
MS products have much to offer, and the competition isn't all that great.
:
: The problem is that they've been convinced that
: crap like MS Office has more functionality than the good apps.
:
Please name these "good apps".
John Kheit
mmalcolm crawford <m.cra...@shef.ac.uk> wrote:
> My personal favourites:
> From Lighthouse ( http://www.lighthouse.com/ )
> TaskMaster, Quantrix, OpenWrite, Diagram!, Concurrence, OmniWeb
OpenWrite...well let's say we diverge there :)
> From Stone Design ( http://www.stone.com/ )
> Dataphile, Checksum, Create
> From AFS
> PasteUp, WriteUp
> From Netsurfer ( http://www.netsurfer.com )
> Netsurfer, NetKit
> Oh. and from NeXT of course ( http://www.next.com )
> OpenStep for Mach, Interface Builder, Project Builder, WebObjects
Just to add, some apps I think are best of their breed:
Tiffany2 -- much better than photoshop, to me...
Virtuoso2 -- best illustration UI, to me
NeXTmail -- most elegant and usable mail app, to me
NeXTDEVELOPER TOOLS -- most usable, to me
Concurrance -- best presentation/outlining tool, to me
Tailor -- best edit any postscript file program :)
NEXTSTEP SERVICES -- make all apps so much easier, and robust...witness
PixelMagician graphics filters that are used system wide....
Really, the list is long, and I don't have the desire to go on listing app
after app that are just a sheer pleasure to use under NEXT/OPENSTEP....
--
Thanks, be well, take care, later, John Kheit )^> %^) =^)
monoChrome, Inc. | New York Law School
NEXTSTEP Developer | Opinions expressed represent me only
MIME, SUN, & NeXTmail OK | http://cnj.digex.net/~jkheit
mailto:jkh...@cnj.digex.net | Telepathy...It's coming...
mmalcolm crawford
On 08/15/96, Jerry Shekhel wrote:
> I agree that good products *eventually* win out over lousy ones. If MS was
> nearly as bad as everyone here says, it would have been seen as such and
> dumped by the public years ago. The truth is obviously not that simple.
> MS products have much to offer, and the competition isn't all that great.
>
> : The problem is that they've been convinced that
> : crap like MS Office has more functionality than the good apps.
>
> Please name these "good apps".
>
My personal favourites:
From Lighthouse ( http://www.lighthouse.com/ )
TaskMaster, Quantrix, OpenWrite, Diagram!, Concurrence, OmniWeb
From Stone Design ( http://www.stone.com/ )
Dataphile, Checksum, Create
From AFS
PasteUp, WriteUp
From Netsurfer ( http://www.netsurfer.com )
Netsurfer, NetKit
Oh. and from NeXT of course ( http://www.next.com )
OpenStep for Mach, Interface Builder, Project Builder, WebObjects
Best wishes,
mmalc.
--
Matthew N. Reichman
In <4uvg3p$s...@orion.cybercom.net> Jerry Shekhel wrote:
> I agree that good products *eventually* win out over lousy ones. If MS was
> nearly as bad as everyone here says, it would have been seen as such and
> dumped by the public years ago. The truth is obviously not that simple.
> MS products have much to offer, and the competition isn't all that great.
It's not a question of -bad- products, but error-laden, haphazardly put
together, not-always productively designed, mediocre (even at conception or
spurred by the need for the ultimate backward compatability (pros and cons to
that)) products.
That the good always wins out is a blatant falacy as an study of history will
show. Even "minor" events as in the role that oil/gas U.S. corporations have
played in shaping this country via any means possible (particularly their out
and out destruction of mass rail transit (past) and production of safer/less
environment destructive sources of fuel (present)) doesn't strike me as the
"better" winning out in the end, but that the most powerful and cunning win
(as is predictable).
OTH there's the old saying - if I had a choice between two presidents - one
good natured, honest guy who gets manipulated by the powers behind the
curtains, and the other, a smart "player", I'd take the smart guy over the
naive guy any day. (That was a bad paraphrase - anyone know the correct
wording?)
Aristophanes
Matthew N. Reichman wrote:
>
> In <pecora-1208...@lou-pecora.nrl.navy.mil> Louis M. Pecora wrote:
> [snip]
> > types even more to do. Not that it necessarily gave companies any
> > advantage. That is still being debated in the light of the fact that
> > productivity per person has been approximately constant for decades.
>
> This is, I think, an always fascinating point. Does technology affect per
> person's productivity? And how has technology helped anything? Granted
> "anything" and "helped" can be viewed as subjective terms. Are there net
> available studies on this?
There was a study done sometime in the 1970's analyzing if vacuum cleaners as
a new technology actaully reduced the hours of housework per week or so. The
introduction had no effect at all.
> My personal subj. op. is "no". Especially from a quality of life pov -
> another debatable issue. When did "quality of life" become an issue anyway,
> is there a rough date attached to that?
I suspect that "no" is correct. Take word processors. Do they actually allow
us to produce faster? Nope. We type at the same speed, in fact, I bet we type
more now as we have unlimited capacity and a belief that we are now faster.
Scott Byer
Jerry Shekhel writes:
Jerry> Nonsense, Cory. NT architecture hasn't changed much in 4.0. Stop
Jerry> spreading this "hybrid" FUD.
Yup, all the poorly implemented parts are still poorly implemented (VM,
scheduler...)
Aren't they embarrassed that Linux has a better VM system and a better
scheduler?
Unfortunately, most users don't care or don't know, and they buy into the MS
NT hype. Sigh.
--
Scott Byer, Unix Photoshop Project Lead mailto:by...@adobe.com
Adobe Systems Incorporated These are my opinions, and
1585 Charleston Road, P.O. Box 7900 do not necessarily reflect
Mountain View, CA 94039-7900 the opinions of my employer.
Jerry Shekhel
Christopher Robato (cro...@kuentos.guam.net) wrote:
: :>:
: :>: Microsoft has glued the NT dispatcher and file system onto W95
: :>: and renamed this hybred NT4.0. This is W96. This paste
: :>: job is the news of summer 1996?
: :>
: :>this "hybrid" FUD.
:
: You mean a movement of USER and GDI modules from application space
: to kernel space, plus all the accompanying rewrites and
: modifications necessary to support this, and the fact that it
: requires a new set of drivers, isn't considered "much".
:
: Stop apologizing, Jerry.
Please. Cory provided *ZERO* proof for his preposterous claim that NT4 is
a Win95/NT hybrid, and you have provided *ZERO* proof for your claims of
"accompanying rewrites and modifications". Just who's apologizing here?
: Chris
mmalcolm crawford
On 08/16/96, Bryan Seigneur wrote:
> Which goes to show -- it's not just how "Good" a piece of software
> is, it's how much it really COSTS!
>
I guess the cost of the PC has been a factor -- although with the
requirements being what they are a system which could be deployed for W95 can
now as easily run NEXTSTEP -- however NEXTSTEP is available to academics for
$299, and that *includes* the Developer tools. You can get copies of all
Lighthouse's products on an edu CD-ROM for a total of $99. So, that makes
less than $400 for a suite of applications that, IMHO, blows away anything
from MicroSoft.
Refs:
http://www.next.com/
http://www.lighthouse.com/
If you're an academic there isn't really a cost argument to address.
The other side of this, though, is the *cost of ownership*. I would submit
that although the upfront costs of M$ products are low, the recurrent costs
in maintenance, lost productivity etc. far outweigh the initial benefits.
Best wishes,
mmalc.
--
John Kheit
Bryan Seigneur <sone...@sonetech.com> wrote:
> Which goes to show -- it's not just how "Good" a piece of software is,
it's how much it really COSTS!
I guess I really have to agree with that, though I don't want to :)
However, if you are a student, all the apps and OS and everything can be
had for about $400 bux! So you'd think every student in the country would
run out and get OPENSTEP and the Lighthouse edu CD... alas, it's not that
simple....
Jonathan W. Hendry
Last episode, dashing Scott Byer exclaimed:
: Aren't they embarrassed that Linux has a better VM system and a better
: scheduler?
Maybe someone could MIME mail a distribution to Dave Cutler
and Bill? Perhaps they could use the hint...
Dear Bill:
Enclosed is a Linux CDRom. Please examine the source
code, wherein you will find all those things you've
been trying to add to DOS. Only here, they're done
correctly.
Don't mention it.
--
Jonathan W. Hendry Views expressed herein do
Steel Driving Software, Inc. not represent those of
stee...@ix.netcom.com Steel Driving Software, Inc.
j...@exnext.com or Lexis-Nexis
Bryan Seigneur
John Kheit wrote:
>
> Just to add, some apps I think are best of their breed:
> Tiffany2 -- much better than photoshop, to me...
> Virtuoso2 -- best illustration UI, to me
> NeXTmail -- most elegant and usable mail app, to me
> NeXTDEVELOPER TOOLS -- most usable, to me
> Concurrance -- best presentation/outlining tool, to me
> Tailor -- best edit any postscript file program :)
>
> NEXTSTEP SERVICES -- make all apps so much easier, and robust...witness
> PixelMagician graphics filters that are used system wide....
>
> Really, the list is long, and I don't have the desire to go on listing app
> after app that are just a sheer pleasure to use under NEXT/OPENSTEP....
> Thanks, be well, take care, later, John Kheit )^> %^) =^)
Which goes to show -- it's not just how "Good" a piece of software
is, it's how much it really COSTS!
One of the areas I agree with Bill G strongly in--COST. Look:
If all the applications ran on any operating system, we would
still be the lowest-cost, most widely used operating system.
So we don't need anything to be married to our operating system.
We're the low-cost producer of the operating system.
--Bill Gates in Upside Magazine, on
the pervasive power of low-cost
operating systems. <GRIN>
Cute, huh? Linux blows that theory to hell. Or does it?
--
Bryan Seigneur
Windows NT. How to make a 100 MIPS Linux
workstation perform like an 8 MHz 286 PC.
Tim Gerchmez
On 14 Aug 1996 11:29:39 GMT, kiy...@kiyoinc.com wrote:
>In <4uqdor$1...@orion.cybercom.net>, je...@cybercom.net (Jerry Shekhel) writes:
>>kiy...@kiyoinc.com wrote:
>>:
>>: Microsoft has glued the NT dispatcher and file system onto W95
>>: and renamed this hybred NT4.0. This is W96. This paste
>>: job is the news of summer 1996?
>>:
>>
>>Nonsense, Cory. NT architecture hasn't changed much in 4.0. Stop spreading
>>this "hybrid" FUD.
>
>>--
>>Jerry J. Shekhel
>
>OK, I'll go with that. The dispatcher and file system are unchanged,
>the GUI has been warted on. It's still not a dramatic new product.
Since when does a 3.5(1) to 4.0 upgrade constitute a "dramatic new
product?"
--
Check out my home page at http://www.blarg.net/~future/index.html
I'm a volunteer at the Win95 Help Site. Drop by if you need help with Win95.
http://www.isisnet.com/terrymo/index.html
Joshua McKee - Denver
Jerry Shekhel (je...@cybercom.net) wrote:
: I agree that good products *eventually* win out over lousy ones. If MS was
: nearly as bad as everyone here says, it would have been seen as such and
: dumped by the public years ago. The truth is obviously not that simple.
: MS products have much to offer, and the competition isn't all that great.
The competition that is great quickly gets eliminated by MS either by being
purchased or run over. A current example would be MS trying to remove
Netscape from the market. As for the better products eventually overcoming
poor ones, the mac community has demostrated that thisis true. My opinion is
that the mac software is more refined than PC software. I'm sure many will
agree/disgree with that though.
: : The problem is that they've been convinced that
: : crap like MS Office has more functionality than the good apps.
: :
: Please name these "good apps".
My experience has shown people to prefer Word Perfect over Word (those that
have actually used both). Unfortunately Word wins over WP because it is the
market leader (thus making it that much more of a leader). Many companies
select Office for based on market share, which only starts the snowball
rolling even faster.
My personal feeling is that MS, being the largest software company, writes
some of the worst code. Windows NT is perhaps the only product MS has produced
that I feel they did a good job with. I am certain that I am not alone in
this thought.
This is one of the reasons mac users love the mac...most programs work very
well. Look at the uprising over the new version of Word (6.0) compared to
the earlier version (5.1a). Word 6.0 brought the garbage associated with PC's
to the mac, and mac users didn't go for it. Unfortunately, Word 6.0 has so
much momentum that not using it is almost becoming impossible (if you share
files with co-workers). I've decided to stick with 5.1a on my home mac
because I can't live with Word 6.0's lack of refinement. Many people will
think that this is it picking, but why settle for average when you can have
excellence (taking cost out of the picture).
Josh
Joshua McKee - Denver
Tim Gerchmez (fut...@blarg.net) wrote:
: >OK, I'll go with that. The dispatcher and file system are unchanged,
: >the GUI has been warted on. It's still not a dramatic new product.
: Since when does a 3.5(1) to 4.0 upgrade constitute a "dramatic new
: product?"
Under the version numbering scheme that I'm used to, I would expect NT 4.0 to
be a major upgrade. Here's my versioning scheme, does it fit with anyone
else's:
One's Digit: Indicates a major update to the product.
Tenth's Digit: Indicates minor enhancments.
Hundreth's Digit: Indicates bug fixes, very minor enchancements.
The transition from 3.x to 4.x would indicate some major enhancements to NT 4.0.
Josh
Christopher Robato
In message <4v13q4$b...@orion.cybercom.net> - je...@cybercom.net
(Jerry Shekhel)16 Aug 1996 06:17:39 GMT writes:
:>
:>Christopher Robato (cro...@kuentos.guam.net) wrote:
:>: :>:
:>: :>: Microsoft has glued the NT dispatcher and file system onto W95
:>: :>: and renamed this hybred NT4.0. This is W96. This paste
:>: :>: job is the news of summer 1996?
:>: :>
:>: :>Nonsense, Cory. NT architecture hasn't changed much in 4.0. Stop spreading
:>: :>this "hybrid" FUD.
:>: You mean a movement of USER and GDI modules from application space
:>: to kernel space, plus all the accompanying rewrites and
:>: modifications necessary to support this, and the fact that it
:>: requires a new set of drivers, isn't considered "much".
:>:
:>: Stop apologizing, Jerry.
:>:
:>
:>Please. Cory provided *ZERO* proof for his preposterous claim that NT4 is
:>a Win95/NT hybrid, and you have provided *ZERO* proof for your claims of
:>"accompanying rewrites and modifications". Just who's apologizing here?
:>
:>: Chris
:>--
:>Jerry J. Shekhel
:>je...@cybercom.net
:> , , ,
:>"Is maith liom Mi Mheain an tSamhraidh." - M. Ni Chobhthaigh
Bullshit Jerry. It's all over the place. Read the July or August
issue of Byte. It's also there. The news are pretty
old---everyone knows about the rewrite since last year. Why don't
you checked it with the real NT advocates---all of them know about
it. That's common knowledge, and we, both OS/2 and NT advocates,
have discussed this openly, fair and square, admitted its
advantages and dissadvantages, and I don't have to prove to *you*
what is common knowledge to everyone in the Usenet and the media.
All the proof you need is to take your head out of the sand.
Everyone knows that the graphics and windowing subsystems in NT is
moved from user space to kernel space. That's not a small change.
That obviously necessitates a rewrite with regards to the
behavior of the graphics system in NT 4.0. One of the purposes of
such is for NT to be compatible with DirectX, such as being able
to access graphics hardware directly for gaming purposes. That's
not possible with the previous and more secure NT version assuming
only documented APIs are used.
Terry Kyriacopoulos
On 11 Aug 1996, David Every wrote:
> (For now the ratio of idiots to wise is too high....
> probably 9:1.... which coincidentally happens to be the same ratio of PC
> buyers to Mac buyers.... a relationship there? Maybe)....
What makes a Macintosh so much superior to a PC?
Even if it has superior architecture it is still a proprietary system (if
I'm not mistaken), and that is a major handicap. I can assemble a PC
clone piece-by-piece from a *wide* variety of competitively priced parts
and can run a just as wide variety of software. The PC itself is an
old and klunky system, but economies of scale are very important in
hardware.
Also, a decent OS (like Linux) can do well to keep the hardware's
deficiencies from impacting on the user.
John Holt
In article <4uvged$i...@usc.edu>, reic...@usc.edu (Matthew N. Reichman) writes:
|> In <pecora-1208...@lou-pecora.nrl.navy.mil> Louis M. Pecora wrote:
|> [snip]
|> This is, I think, an always fascinating point. Does technology affect per
|> person's productivity? And how has technology helped anything? Granted
|> "anything" and "helped" can be viewed as subjective terms. Are there net
|> available studies on this?
Many studies over the centuries. Many examples of technology increasing
productivity. Example of using electricity to feed power to tools
instead of use of belts to feed power to tools. Example of using targetted
direct mail instead of generic junk mail. The case is not so clear for
office automation.
|>
|> My personal subj. op. is "no". Especially from a quality of life pov -
|> another debatable issue. When did "quality of life" become an issue anyway,
Technology does improve quality of life. Example of water and sewer tech
is compelling. Not all technology has positive impact, and not always
to all people. Example of special needs technologies is a compelling
case for improving quality of life for some people.
|> is there a rough date attached to that?
|>
|> --
|> Be well,
|>
|> Matthew Reichman
|> reic...@usc.edu
|> USC-CNTV
|> NeXTStep v.3.3 m68k
|> NeXTMAIL & MIME welcome
|>
|> ===============================================================
|> PGP key --> email w/ subject "request_PGP"
|> ---------------------------------------------------------------
|> Computer Privacy Information --> http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/
|>
--
###################################################################
John Holt # Voice (513) 865-6821
Speaking only for myself. #
##################################################################
Joe Ragosta
In article <4v5jpo$m...@denver.ssds.com>, j...@godel.denver.ssds.com (Joshua
McKee - Denver) wrote:
> The competition that is great quickly gets eliminated by MS either by being
> purchased or run over. A current example would be MS trying to remove
> Netscape from the market. As for the better products eventually overcoming
> poor ones, the mac community has demostrated that thisis true. My opinion is
> that the mac software is more refined than PC software. I'm sure many will
> agree/disgree with that though.
I got a good laugh from Peter Lewis' article in the NY Times. In it he said:
I have never seen a normal human being compare the Mac OS, Windows and
Unix systems side by side and come away saying, "Gee, I really prefer the
way Windows and Unix work."
John Rudd
Joe Ragosta (jrag...@dca.net) wrote:
: I got a good laugh from Peter Lewis' article in the NY Times. In it he said:
: I have never seen a normal human being compare the Mac OS, Windows and
: Unix systems side by side and come away saying, "Gee, I really prefer the
: way Windows and Unix work."
Well, if by "unix" you include Nextstep, I've seen people choose "unix"
over Mac's several times. Normal people who aren't computer enthusiasts.
And, the quote just shoes how little Peter Lewis knows about Unix.
--
John "Kzin" Rudd kz...@isc.sjsu.edu (ex-...@cc.gatech.edu)
=========Intel: Putting the backward in backward compatable.============
When I hear people sigh 'life is hard', i am always tempted to ask,
'compared to what?'" -- sydney j harris
Jerry Kuch
In article <4v1g2a$4...@bignews.shef.ac.uk>,
>> is, it's how much it really COSTS!
>>
>requirements being what they are a system which could be deployed for W95 can
>now as easily run NEXTSTEP -- however NEXTSTEP is available to academics for
>$299, and that *includes* the Developer tools.
Of course not everybody in the world is an academic...
>You can get copies of all
>Lighthouse's products on an edu CD-ROM for a total of $99. So, that makes
>less than $400 for a suite of applications that, IMHO, blows away anything
>from MicroSoft.
From what I've heard OpenWrite doesn't stack up all that well compared
to Word, and I've had ParaSheet has crashed a bit too often on comparatively
simple spreadsheets (I'm not even a heavy business app user) for me to want
to bet anything on it over Excel. I do agree that the Lighthouse CD
(which again is only available at the special price for academics) is a
terrific deal though. Of course the deal is only available for academics,
and with Sun's recent purchase of Lighthouse, who knows what it's future
will be.
>The other side of this, though, is the *cost of ownership*. I would submit
>that although the upfront costs of M$ products are low, the recurrent costs
>in maintenance, lost productivity etc. far outweigh the initial benefits.
Then again, with NEXTSTEP/Intel there's the cost of having your hands
practically tied with respect to getting support for video cards, sound
cards and a ton of other hardware that is available at commodity prices
on PC's but for which NeXT doesn't have the resources required to supply
enough drivers. Further, if we put aside initial benefits, the MS
operating system products at least have the advantage that they're
being actively upgraded and will continue to be for a long time. With
NeXT's recent releases on their position I find it hard to develop much
confidence that the Mach-based NeXT OS is going to improve at anything
like a comparable rate while NeXT focusses more on OpenStep for NT.
--
Jerry Kuch EMail: gdk...@mercator.math.uwaterloo.ca, NeXTMail welcome.
IMPORTANT NEWS: Scripts for "Godzilla Vs. Desutoroia" had envisaged
the monster's main target as the 1996 World City Expo in Tokyo
but the idea fell through when Gov. Yukio Aoshima cancelled the event.
Sangria
In article <4utr8j$f...@lehi.kuentos.guam.net>, cro...@kuentos.guam.net wrote:
>In message <4uqdor$1...@orion.cybercom.net> - je...@cybercom.net
>(Jerry Shekhel)13 Aug 1996 17:24:43 GMT writes:
>
>:>this "hybrid" FUD.
>
>You mean a movement of USER and GDI modules from application space
>to kernel space, plus all the accompanying rewrites and
>modifications necessary to support this, and the fact that it
>requires a new set of drivers, isn't considered "much".
Actually, that really doesn't change the underlying architecture
that much. NT is a hybrid microkernel. It is still based on a
client/server architecture. It is still modular, layered, etc...
The only difference is as you said, two modules now run in previlaged
mode rather than user mode. The modules are still there, the
layering is still there, the client/server relationship between
modules are there, etc.. You just end up with fewer context
swaps moving from previlaged to non-previlaged mode.
Does this require different drivers? Yes.
But then so did moving NT from 3.5 to 3.51.
David Kurtz
In article <Pine.LNX.3.91.960818222814.56C-100000@dita>, Terry
Kyriacopoulos <ter...@interlog.com> wrote:
>On 11 Aug 1996, David Every wrote:
>
>> (For now the ratio of idiots to wise is too high....
>> probably 9:1.... which coincidentally happens to be the same ratio of PC
>> buyers to Mac buyers.... a relationship there? Maybe)....
>
>What makes a Macintosh so much superior to a PC?
Well, let's see. With PCs running Windows, you have a crummy hardware
platform and fifteen (or more) years of OS and GUI kludges hacked on to
have a barely usable system.
With the Mac, you have a great hardware architecture with a
widely-acclaimed GUI and an OS that was once well-designed but now has
about ten years of kludges grafted on to provide a reasonably usable
system.
>Even if it has superior architecture it is still a proprietary system (if
>I'm not mistaken), and that is a major handicap. I can assemble a PC
>clone piece-by-piece from a *wide* variety of competitively priced parts
>and can run a just as wide variety of software. The PC itself is an
>old and klunky system, but economies of scale are very important in
>hardware.
Purchase price is rarely the largest expense in a computer buying decision.
>Also, a decent OS (like Linux) can do well to keep the hardware's
>deficiencies from impacting on the user.
Well I suppose that's a good start; though why not just use something well
designed from the ground-up? Be, for instance? If you can prove to Be that
you are a serious developer, you can get the bare-bones box for a little
over $1000. Heck, Apple may have the Mac back in tip-top shape by next
year. If you buy one now, you can run BeOS in February. MKLinux will also
be available for Apple boxes. I'm sure a host of other software and
hardware companies are itching at the prospect of PPCP. Why would you want
to tie yourself to the PC architecture (at heart a glorified Apple II)
when there are other better-designed options available?
____________________________________________________________________
David Kurtz da...@lightside.net http://www.lightside.net/~david/
Tim Gerchmez
On 17 Aug 1996 23:24:53 GMT, j...@godel.denver.ssds.com (Joshua McKee -
Denver) wrote:
>Tim Gerchmez (fut...@blarg.net) wrote:
>
>: >OK, I'll go with that. The dispatcher and file system are unchanged,
>: >the GUI has been warted on. It's still not a dramatic new product.
>
>: Since when does a 3.5(1) to 4.0 upgrade constitute a "dramatic new
>: product?"
>
>
>Under the version numbering scheme that I'm used to, I would expect NT 4.0 to
>be a major upgrade.
Since when does a major upgrade constitute a "dramatic new product?"
John Kheit
jrag...@dca.net (Joe Ragosta) wrote:
> I have never seen a normal human being compare the Mac OS, Windows and
Unix systems side by side and come away saying, "Gee, I really prefer the
way Windows and Unix work."
I have, regardless of how you define normal... More 'technically' inclined
people like the robust nature of Unix. However, even novices that have
seen/used NEXT/OPENSTEP have come away saying that they prefer the way it
works to MacOS and windows.
--
Thanks, be well, take care, later, John Kheit )^> %^) =^)
monoChrome, Inc. | New York Law School
John Kheit
jrag...@dca.net (Joe Ragosta) wrote:
> In article <4vd2ns$2...@news4.digex.net>, jkh...@cnj.digex.net wrote:
> > jrag...@dca.net (Joe Ragosta) wrote:
> > > I have never seen a normal human being compare the Mac OS, Windows
and
> > Unix systems side by side and come away saying, "Gee, I really prefer
the
> > way Windows and Unix work."
> >
> > I have, regardless of how you define normal... More 'technically'
inclined
> > people like the robust nature of Unix. However, even novices that have
> > seen/used NEXT/OPENSTEP have come away saying that they prefer the way
it
> > works to MacOS and windows.
that was my statement. I believe it came from InfoWorld, but I can't
remember.
> Please be careful about how you edit posts.
Woops, sorry Joe, sometimes I'm a bit too quick with the snip fingers :)
Ron House
Terry Kyriacopoulos <ter...@interlog.com> writes:
>On 11 Aug 1996, David Every wrote:
>> (For now the ratio of idiots to wise is too high....
>> probably 9:1.... which coincidentally happens to be the same ratio of PC
>> buyers to Mac buyers.... a relationship there? Maybe)....
>What makes a Macintosh so much superior to a PC?
>Even if it has superior architecture it is still a proprietary system (if
>I'm not mistaken), and that is a major handicap.
I learned my lesson with Apple way back in the Apple ][ days. Our uni's
kid's club had one and it developed a fault in its ROM (I think that was it,
but it was long ago). A kind technician gave free service to find the
problem. He told us where it was, we ordered the part through our uni's
arcane ordering system, and months later, Apple said "where's the bung
one?" Well, we looked and could not find, and a $3000 Apple was thrown
on the scrapheap because the company refused point-blank to sell us
the new part. I've warned people off Apple ever since. Probably lost
them close to half a million dollars in sales so far...
Joe Ragosta
mmalcolm crawford
On 08/19/96, Jerry Kuch wrote:
> >I guess the cost of the PC has been a factor -- although with the
> >requirements being what they are a system which could be deployed for W95
> > can now as easily run NEXTSTEP -- however NEXTSTEP is available to
> >academics for $299, and that *includes* the Developer tools.
>
> Of course not everybody in the world is an academic...
>
the sole issue -- initial investment NEXTSTEP is relatively cheap in one
market sector at least, and it's till not as popular as might be expected.
> From what I've heard OpenWrite doesn't stack up all that well compared
> to Word,
>
I know which I'd prefer! :-)
> and I've had ParaSheet has crashed a bit too often on comparatively
> simple spreadsheets (I'm not even a heavy business app user) for me to want
> to bet anything on it over Excel.
>
I don't have sufficeint experience with either to comment.
> I do agree that the Lighthouse CD
> (which again is only available at the special price for academics) is a
> terrific deal though. Of course the deal is only available for academics,
> and with Sun's recent purchase of Lighthouse, who knows what it's future
> will be.
>
I'd guess it'll be good (especially given OpenStep / Solaris, cf below).
> Then again, with NEXTSTEP/Intel there's the cost of having your hands
> practically tied with respect to getting support for video cards, sound
> cards and a ton of other hardware that is available at commodity prices
> on PC's but for which NeXT doesn't have the resources required to supply
> enough drivers.
>
Fair comment, although I think the most popular cards are generaly supported.
> Further, if we put aside initial benefits, the MS
> operating system products at least have the advantage that they're
> being actively upgraded and will continue to be for a long time. With
> NeXT's recent releases on their position I find it hard to develop much
> confidence that the Mach-based NeXT OS is going to improve at anything
> like a comparable rate while NeXT focusses more on OpenStep for NT.
>
Posts from NeXT employees suggest that OpenStep / Mach will be maintained;
NeXT cannot be blamed for their current focus, though.
BTW: Sun's release of OpenStep looks very interesting: it looks like NEXTSTEP
on top of Solaris...
http://www.sun.com/solaris/products/openstep/
Best wishes,
mmalc.
--
Joe Ragosta
In article <house.840559998@helios>, ho...@helios.usq.edu.au (Ron House) wrote:
> I learned my lesson with Apple way back in the Apple ][ days. Our uni's
> kid's club had one and it developed a fault in its ROM (I think that was it,
> but it was long ago). A kind technician gave free service to find the
> problem. He told us where it was, we ordered the part through our uni's
> arcane ordering system, and months later, Apple said "where's the bung
> one?" Well, we looked and could not find, and a $3000 Apple was thrown
> on the scrapheap because the company refused point-blank to sell us
> the new part. I've warned people off Apple ever since. Probably lost
> them close to half a million dollars in sales so far...
I'm sorry you had this experience. However, basing half a million dollars
in purchases on one experience seems rather silly.
In every survey I've seen, Apple's support is ranked as the best or one of
the best in the industry. Toll free support. On-site service. Free
software upgrades. And so on.
What computers are you buying? Packard Bell? Dell? Even Compaq? You're not
getting the level of support you'd be getting from Apple--your single bad
experience notwithstanding.
Terry Kyriacopoulos
On Mon, 19 Aug 1996, David Kurtz wrote:
> Well, let's see. With PCs running Windows, you have a crummy hardware
> platform and fifteen (or more) years of OS and GUI kludges hacked on to
> have a barely usable system.
I was defending the PC hardware only, certainly not DOS/Windoze/Win95.
> With the Mac, you have a great hardware architecture with a
> widely-acclaimed GUI and an OS that was once well-designed but now has
> about ten years of kludges grafted on to provide a reasonably usable
> system.
I remember working with the original Mac in my CS lab. I was not impressed.
The ugliest machine I have ever seen. A joke of a keyboard. A tiny b/w
built-in monitor. A mouse that just couldn't take the abuse in a lab
setting. IMO, the Macintosh would have a greater market share today if
Apple hadn't gotten so cocky about that 'cater to the idiot user' approach
in the design of that first machine. I was not the least bit surprised
when the business community rejected the machine as 'toylike'. Of course,
the Mac has greatly improved, but first impressions persist.
Don't misunderstand me: I am not dissing the Mac. For a lot of people,
it is probably the better system. But I don't like being called an
idiot because I use a PC.
Do you ever wonder why so much effort was made to produce a UNIX clone
(Linux) on the PC platform for free. Would the Linux developers
volunteer to do this if they thought the PC wasn't worth it?
leva...@canuck.com
In <32195dab...@news.blarg.net>, fut...@blarg.net (Tim Gerchmez) writes:
[trimed]
>>: Since when does a 3.5(1) to 4.0 upgrade constitute a "dramatic new
>>: product?"
>>
>>
>>Under the version numbering scheme that I'm used to, I would expect NT 4.0 to
>>be a major upgrade.
>
>Since when does a major upgrade constitute a "dramatic new product?"
When there is a 'dramatic new product' out. NT 4.0 is but an 'upgrade'.
//----------------------------------
// Mark Levaillant
// leva...@canuck.com
// http://www.canuck.com/~levaillm
// TEAM OS/2
// Using OS/2 Merlin Beta, Voice Type Dictation
Art Walker
On Wed, 21 Aug 1996 07:43:55 -0500, Joe Ragosta <jrag...@dca.net> wrote:
>What computers are you buying? Packard Bell? Dell? Even Compaq? You're not
>getting the level of support you'd be getting from Apple--your single bad
>experience notwithstanding.
What you *are* getting (more in the case with Packard Bell and
low-cost 'clone' vendors) is a computer built from generic,
off-the-shelf components which will be easier to service and upgrade
than proprietary-architecture machines.
- Art
Steve Bell
In article <jragosta-220...@ppp-1016.dca.net>,
jrag...@dca.net (Joe Ragosta) wrote:
>In article <Pine.LNX.3.91.960821011414.62A-100000@dita>, Terry
>Kyriacopoulos <ter...@interlog.com> wrote:
>
>> I remember working with the original Mac in my CS lab. I was not impressed.
>> The ugliest machine I have ever seen. A joke of a keyboard. A tiny b/w
>> built-in monitor.
>
>Let me get this straight. You're flaming the Mac because of your
>impressions from 12 years ago. That's oh, about 5, processor generations.
>I guess you really ought to try a more recent Mac, like maybe a IIci or
>something.
Maybe he has to compare his present kit with a Plus to score points?
s
Chris Johnson
In article <slrn51nopm...@beeble.mnscorp.com>,
I consider my old Mac Performa 575 (a reconditioned model) easier to service.
It doesn't break.
:)
Jinx_tigr
(aka Chris Johnson)
Joe Ragosta
Darin Johnson
> I was defending the PC hardware only, certainly not DOS/Windoze/Win95.
How could you defend the hardware? Almost all of its kludges are
there precisely to support booting and running DOS. It's OS dependent
hardware, with a CPU dependent bus (pre-PCI anyway), that is overly
complicated when compared to machines that could auto-detect and
configure cards a decade before plug-and-pray. Hardware advances in
the PC world are few and far between, the industry is more content on
borrowing ideas from each other than in innovation. The *only*
advantage to the hardware is that it's dirt cheap because of the
quantity sold, and because most third party peripherals assume you
only have that hardware.
Yes, Linux runs on it, and manages to work great. But it's not due to
the hardware. Most of the installation complaints about difficulty
are attributable directly to the PC hardware anarchy and complexity
and bugs and lack of standardization. Linux works great despite the
hardware.
> I remember working with the original Mac in my CS lab. I was not impressed.
> The ugliest machine I have ever seen. A joke of a keyboard. A tiny b/w
> built-in monitor. A mouse that just couldn't take the abuse in a lab
> setting.
Did you see it when it was new, or are you basing this upon comparison
to new machines? When it first came out it was slick. Yes, they
keyboard was tiny, but there was no keyboard standardization back then
(much better than todays IBM keyboard standard, blech) and it wasn't
intended to be a workstation class machine. The monitor was tiny, but
so were all other home computer monitors - it had super resolution
compared to other affordable solutions. Home computer users had
likely never seen a mouse before except on workstations (and most had
never seen workstations). People tended to like the look of the
machine. Compare it the the IBM PC of the day; an ugly industrial box
of a machine, mostly text-only or CGA graphics.
Remember cars with wings on the back? Sure they look ugly now, but at
the time they were considered sleek. Same with the original Mac, you
can't compare it based on today's machines. You probably looked ugly
as a baby too.
> IMO, the Macintosh would have a greater market share today if
> Apple hadn't gotten so cocky about that 'cater to the idiot user' approach
> in the design of that first machine. I was not the least bit surprised
> when the business community rejected the machine as 'toylike'. Of course,
> the Mac has greatly improved, but first impressions persist.
To tell you the truth, before I came to work at my current job, I had
seen *more* macs in business uses than PC's. (not at businesses, but
at universities and research sites; but I saw pretty damn few PC's
used for business uses by administrators or secretaries at those places)
In fact, I was surprised when Apple came out with a commercial that
tried to shuck off the toy image, since I never new it had that image.
I think impressions have more to do with the person forming the
impression than anything else. Remember, the PC didn't have a good
impression because of anything it did right, it got the impression
because it had the name IBM on it. That's right, they could have put
the IBM logo on the side of a toaster and the suits would have bought
them in droves. (well, Lotus 1-2-3 was probably nearly equal in
boosting it)
If first impressions persist, the PC should have died on the vine and
never prospered. It was backwards compared to the competitors when it
came out, the same capabilities but it broke all the standards.
> Do you ever wonder why so much effort was made to produce a UNIX clone
> (Linux) on the PC platform for free. Would the Linux developers
> volunteer to do this if they thought the PC wasn't worth it?
Because the PC is inexpensive and because a lot of people have them.
(and besides, Mac users tend to love their machines, and rarely see a
need to run something else on them)
--
Darin Johnson
djoh...@ucsd.edu O-
Support your right to own gnus.
Jerry Kuch
In article <4vftfa$f...@bignews.shef.ac.uk>,
mmalcolm crawford <m.cra...@shef.ac.uk> wrote:
>On 08/19/96, Jerry Kuch wrote:
>> >I guess the cost of the PC has been a factor -- although with the
>> >requirements being what they are a system which could be deployed for W95
>> > can now as easily run NEXTSTEP -- however NEXTSTEP is available to
>> >academics for $299, and that *includes* the Developer tools.
>>
>> Of course not everybody in the world is an academic...
>>
>I didn't make myself sufficiently clear: my aim was to show that price wasn't
>the sole issue -- initial investment NEXTSTEP is relatively cheap in one
>market sector at least, and it's till not as popular as might be expected.
I don't expect it to be very popular in even the academic sector when NeXT
has made few active efforts to make sure that anybody even knows that the
Academic Bundle exists. I can understand why they might not be bothering
to do this given that they don't get much (or maybe any) profit off the
academic discounted package, but if they are going to gain anything from
its availability, it'll be mindshare and the training of future OpenStep
developers. These are somewhat intangible and long term, and don't change
the bottom line on the ledgers very much so it's probably clear why they
don't put many resources into it.
>> I do agree that the Lighthouse CD
>> (which again is only available at the special price for academics) is a
>> terrific deal though. Of course the deal is only available for academics,
>> and with Sun's recent purchase of Lighthouse, who knows what it's future
>> will be.
>>
>I'd guess it'll be good (especially given OpenStep / Solaris, cf below).
After seeing Sun's new OpenStep page, I will admit that the prospects for
the future of OpenStep and the Lighthoue apps seem brighter to me than
they did yesterday.
>> Then again, with NEXTSTEP/Intel there's the cost of having your hands
>> practically tied with respect to getting support for video cards, sound
>> cards and a ton of other hardware that is available at commodity prices
>> on PC's but for which NeXT doesn't have the resources required to supply
>> enough drivers.
>>
>Fair comment, although I think the most popular cards are generaly supported.
True. If I had to make one complaint here it would be the wide range of
cheap PC accessories (like the cheap-o Logitech scanners and the like) that
aren't supported under NEXTSTEP. Of course I don't expect NeXT themselves
to offer such support, since it's necessarily single platform and probably
not going to make them any money. That aside, anybody claiming that they
can't find enough supported parts to build a working NS/I system is full
of it. The biggest long term liability I see here is that as more and more
PC gadgets evolve independently of the other platforms that NS runs on, it
will start to seem like NS takes increasingly poor advantage of Intel systems.
This like 3D accelerated video (I realize that the DSP imaging model causes
problems here), Intel's MMX standard, upcoming Talisman video standards and
the like could be commonplace and getting a lot of attention on the Wintel
side of the PC platform while OpenStep/Intel continues to look about the same
as it always has.
>Posts from NeXT employees suggest that OpenStep / Mach will be maintained;
>NeXT cannot be blamed for their current focus, though.
The problem here is that as far as anybody has been willing to say, the
maintenance of OpenStep/Mach isn't going to include any substantial
improvements to the base OS functionality. The NEXTSTEP core is good, but not
so great that it will be able to sit still for two or five years and not
starting looking a bit long in the tooth. I'd like to see a version with the
BSD 4.4 Lite upgrade for instance.
>BTW: Sun's release of OpenStep looks very interesting: it looks like NEXTSTEP
>on top of Solaris...
>
> http://www.sun.com/solaris/products/openstep/
This page makes its future seem much brighter than it did a few months ago
when Sun would appear places like Object World with no mention of NeXT or
OpenStep to be heard...
cha...@sans.vuw.ac.nz
In <4vaspg$d...@news2.inlink.com>, san...@inlink.com (Sangria) writes:
>Does this require different drivers? Yes.
>But then so did moving NT from 3.5 to 3.51.
MS is very good at this, making drivers for the previous version useless
with the newer ones.. They should have included the option to use the old
way of doing it.
And I hope they do something like that with the OS/2 SIQ..
Robert Woodcock
Art Walker <wal...@beeble.mnscorp.com> composed eloquently:
>On Wed, 21 Aug 1996 07:43:55 -0500, Joe Ragosta <jrag...@dca.net> wrote:
>>What computers are you buying? Packard Bell? Dell? Even Compaq? You're not
>>getting the level of support you'd be getting from Apple--your single bad
>>experience notwithstanding.
>
>What you *are* getting (more in the case with Packard Bell and
>low-cost 'clone' vendors) is a computer built from generic,
>off-the-shelf components which will be easier to service and upgrade
>than proprietary-architecture machines.
You're kidding, right? Ever try to do a motherboard swap on a
Packard Bell?
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER buy from Packard Bell!
(or for that matter, any place with riser card motherboard design.)
Building a box from the ground up is the best way to insure
upgradability.
--
Robert Woodcock - r...@netcom.com
Why do I run Linux? Because rebooting is for hardware upgrades.
Robert Woodcock
Luci Ellis <eli...@dot.net.au> composed eloquently:
>In article <slrn51q7c...@mercury.auburn.org>, r...@netcom.com wrote:
>> You're kidding, right? Ever try to do a motherboard swap on a
>> Packard Bell?
>> NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER buy from Packard Bell!
>> (or for that matter, any place with riser card motherboard design.)
>> Building a box from the ground up is the best way to insure
>> upgradability.
>Well, that's nice for you, but try telling that to, say, my mother.
You mean you wouldn't build a box for your OWN MOM? That's cruel!
>Or to a company with a 3,000 unit installation. I'm sure either of those
>parties would like to build their boxes themselves.
Someone's gotta build them, and a company of that size would be wise to
find out people who do. IMHO if your company is replacing all 3,000 of
those boxes at once we have a management problem.
>I don't want to boast about my salary, but any platform that's cheaper for
>me -- given how I would have to cost out my time -- to put together myself
>than to have someone else do it for me using mass production economies has
>to be pretty custom-job and also pretty pathetic.
No, because that economy of scale isn't passed down to you. Or do you
work for Packard Bell and get a chunk?
When you build your own box you get to choose. You can use shoddy parts
like everyone else or get some quality stuff.
So it takes 6 hours to put it all together. You're gonna be using that
computer for a long time and you're gonna be a lot happier with it
than an unupgradable mess. How much do you make? $50 an hour? That's
$300... Ye gads, get off usenet! We gotta keep that money rolling in!
IMHO $300 may not make up for your immediate wage loss but it
will when you actually get around to using your computer. No L2
cache sucks straight pins.
>Also, if the only way to ensure upgradability is to spend all that
>(expensive) time yourself, the hardware platform is broken.
Notice that here I said best, not only. I wouldn't trap myself
that easy. :)
Packard Bell and others do not follow hardware platform
specifications. They design and use their own proprietary equipment.
It's their way of cutting corners.
>There is no excuse for bad design.
With the exception of 3,000 unit companies and your mom.
Joe Ragosta
> On Wed, 21 Aug 1996 07:43:55 -0500, Joe Ragosta <jrag...@dca.net> wrote:
> >What computers are you buying? Packard Bell? Dell? Even Compaq? You're not
> >getting the level of support you'd be getting from Apple--your single bad
> >experience notwithstanding.
>
> What you *are* getting (more in the case with Packard Bell and
> low-cost 'clone' vendors) is a computer built from generic,
> off-the-shelf components which will be easier to service and upgrade
> than proprietary-architecture machines.
Really? I can upgrade my 7500/100 to a 604e simply by replacing a
daughtercard. Can you upgrade your Pentium to Pentium Pro without
replacing the entire motherboard?
I've upgraded multiple Macs by adding SCSI hard drives. Plug them in and
you're done. On PCs, you often have to add a card (if SCSI isn't built
in).
Servicing? You could be right, but it's a moot point. I've never had a Mac
which needed service past the warranty period. During the warranty period,
Apple sends a repair person on-site within a couple of days, so it's not a
big deal.
Would you care to support your assertions?
Luci Ellis
> You're kidding, right? Ever try to do a motherboard swap on a
> Packard Bell?
>
> NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER buy from Packard Bell!
>
> (or for that matter, any place with riser card motherboard design.)
>
> Building a box from the ground up is the best way to insure
> upgradability.
Well, that's nice for you, but try telling that to, say, my mother. Or to
a company with a 3,000 unit installation. I'm sure either of those parties
would like to build their boxes themselves.
I don't want to boast about my salary, but any platform that's cheaper for
me -- given how I would have to cost out my time -- to put together myself
than to have someone else do it for me using mass production economies has
to be pretty custom-job and also pretty pathetic.
Also, if the only way to ensure upgradability is to spend all that
(expensive) time yourself, the hardware platform is broken.
There is no excuse for bad design.
End of story.
Luci
*********************************************************************
Luci Ellis eli...@dot.net.au
"Who needs horror movies when we have Microsoft"?
-- Christine Comaford, PC Week, 27/9/95
NB: The email address has changed but the old one still works.
Luci Ellis
> Luci Ellis <eli...@dot.net.au> composed eloquently:
> >In article <slrn51q7c...@mercury.auburn.org>, r...@netcom.com wrote:
> >> You're kidding, right? Ever try to do a motherboard swap on a
> >> Packard Bell?
>
> >> NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER buy from Packard Bell!
>
> >> (or for that matter, any place with riser card motherboard design.)
>
> >> Building a box from the ground up is the best way to insure
> >> upgradability.
>
> >Well, that's nice for you, but try telling that to, say, my mother.
>
> You mean you wouldn't build a box for your OWN MOM? That's cruel!
I would, but she lives 800 miles away. So I'd build the box, drive
fourteen hours down to Melbourne, install it. Gee, that's sure less
expensive in my time than giving her the money for a Performa 6400 or a
PowerBase when one comes out.
Anyway my Mum's just an example, she doesn't WANT a computer and has no
use for one, except maybe for email. And Dad still has his 386.
> >Or to a company with a 3,000 unit installation. I'm sure either of those
> >parties would like to build their boxes themselves.
>
> Someone's gotta build them, and a company of that size would be wise to
> find out people who do. IMHO if your company is replacing all 3,000 of
> those boxes at once we have a management problem.
It could be a 10,000 unit company replacing 3000 of them at once. Or an
expanding company putting in a new division for the first time. Or one of
those companies the PC-advocates would like us to believe are dumping
their Macs for PCs <grin>.
The point is that companies don't want to hire their own people just to
put boxes together if the manufacturer can already do it. Putting together
100,000 boxes a year will be cheaper per unit, because of economies of
scale and specialisation, than hiring some people to assemble them
on-site, and buying whatever equipment (electric screwdrivers or whatever)
to help them.
And then once you've installed those boxes, you have to sack those people
again. This isn't a smart way to run the company. You could instead get
consultants, but they cost more per hour because of the nature of
consultancy work.
> >I don't want to boast about my salary, but any platform that's cheaper for
> >me -- given how I would have to cost out my time -- to put together myself
> >than to have someone else do it for me using mass production economies has
> >to be pretty custom-job and also pretty pathetic.
>
> No, because that economy of scale isn't passed down to you. Or do you
> work for Packard Bell and get a chunk?
You didn't realise I am a Mac advocate on these groups <grin>?
> When you build your own box you get to choose. You can use shoddy parts
> like everyone else or get some quality stuff.
Well, there's the difference. I had in my head putting something together
from Mac parts, when I could be buying from Power Computing. This "the
companies use garbage" doesn't seem to come into it as much, Apple's
latest troubles notwithstanding.
> So it takes 6 hours to put it all together. You're gonna be using that
> computer for a long time and you're gonna be a lot happier with it
> than an unupgradable mess. How much do you make? $50 an hour? That's
> $300... Ye gads, get off usenet! We gotta keep that money rolling in!
I have a second job writing columns for a computer mag. UseNet is just one
component of my research.... it gets me annoyed enough to write them
<grin>.
> Packard Bell and others do not follow hardware platform
> specifications. They design and use their own proprietary equipment.
>
> It's their way of cutting corners.
What a shame it's never been profitable for them yet.
Regards,
Terry Kyriacopoulos
On 22 Aug 1996, Darin Johnson wrote:
> How could you defend the hardware? Almost all of its kludges are
> there precisely to support booting and running DOS. It's OS dependent
> hardware, with a CPU dependent bus (pre-PCI anyway), that is overly
OS dependent hardware? The OS boots off disk. DOS, Windows, NT, OS/2,
Linux, FreeBSD, or do-it-yourself. Take your pick. So what if it's
optimized for DOS.
> complicated when compared to machines that could auto-detect and
> configure cards a decade before plug-and-pray. Hardware advances in
> the PC world are few and far between, the industry is more content on
> borrowing ideas from each other than in innovation. The *only*
> advantage to the hardware is that it's dirt cheap because of the
> quantity sold, and because most third party peripherals assume you
> only have that hardware.
>
And that's a crucial advantage. Like it or not, we're stuck with it.
It's economics, not technology, that fuels PC sales.
> Yes, Linux runs on it, and manages to work great. But it's not due to
> the hardware. Most of the installation complaints about difficulty
> are attributable directly to the PC hardware anarchy and complexity
> and bugs and lack of standardization. Linux works great despite the
> hardware.
>
Linux is (currently) unavailable on the Mac. Enough said.
> > I remember working with the original Mac in my CS lab. I was not impressed.
> > The ugliest machine I have ever seen. A joke of a keyboard. A tiny b/w
> > built-in monitor. A mouse that just couldn't take the abuse in a lab
> > setting.
>
> Did you see it when it was new, or are you basing this upon comparison
> to new machines? When it first came out it was slick. Yes, they
> keyboard was tiny, but there was no keyboard standardization back then
> (much better than todays IBM keyboard standard, blech) and it wasn't
> intended to be a workstation class machine. The monitor was tiny, but
> so were all other home computer monitors - it had super resolution
> compared to other affordable solutions. Home computer users had
It was that *annoying* sound the keys made -- worse than a PET :-)
Workstation class machine? Is that how you define a decently manufactured
computer? Even in 1984, that tiny b/w monitor was shabby. High
resolution as long as you keep your nose six inches away. Thank you,
but I'd rather have a *choice* of monitors.
> likely never seen a mouse before except on workstations (and most had
> never seen workstations). People tended to like the look of the
> machine. Compare it the the IBM PC of the day; an ugly industrial box
> of a machine, mostly text-only or CGA graphics.
The only major problem with the original PC box was the huge footprint.
The mini-tower case is a big improvement.
> I think impressions have more to do with the person forming the
> impression than anything else. Remember, the PC didn't have a good
> impression because of anything it did right, it got the impression
> because it had the name IBM on it. That's right, they could have put
> the IBM logo on the side of a toaster and the suits would have bought
> them in droves. (well, Lotus 1-2-3 was probably nearly equal in
> boosting it)
>
> If first impressions persist, the PC should have died on the vine and
> never prospered. It was backwards compared to the competitors when it
> came out, the same capabilities but it broke all the standards.
That's an important point: The IBM mystique was alive and well back in
1982. On its own merits, this machine could not redefine the industry.
It was, as many point out, a big fat Apple ][, incorporating no break-
throughs except a magical IBM plate. You can't change history. Just
imagine where we would be today if there was no IBM PC. Would Apple
dominate? Would the Apple ][ clones have evolved and dominate? Would
the suits still be using IBM mainframes?
> > Do you ever wonder why so much effort was made to produce a UNIX clone
> > (Linux) on the PC platform for free. Would the Linux developers
> > volunteer to do this if they thought the PC wasn't worth it?
>
> Because the PC is inexpensive and because a lot of people have them.
> (and besides, Mac users tend to love their machines, and rarely see a
> need to run something else on them)
When Linux was on the drawing board, most installed PCs had no more than
2M of RAM, and hard disks less than 80M. CD-ROM drives were expensive.
The typical Linux user-to-be had to face an expensive hardware upgrade
before installing the OS. Given that, don't you think the *real*
reason for choosing the PC platform was its open architecture?
Wade E. Masshardt
In article <Pine.LNX.3.91.960824004425.58B-100000@dita>, Terry
Kyriacopoulos <ter...@interlog.com> wrote:
>Linux is (currently) unavailable on the Mac. Enough said.
Really? You might want to tell them at <http://www.mklinux.apple.com/>.
They seem to think they have Linux available for the Nubus PowerMacs.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| mailto:wema...@facstaff.wisc.edu |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Watch Babylon 5 <http://www.babylon5.com/cmp/support/airtime.htm> |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| "There is always the threat of an attack by, say, a giant space |
| dragon, the kind that eats the sun every thirty days. It's a |
| nuisance, but what can you expect from reptiles. Did I mention |
| that my nose is on fire and that I have fifteen wild badgers |
| living in my trousers?" |
| - Marcus Cole, Ranger |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
Robert Woodcock
Lemme see if I understand this right:
Side 1: Buy new computers all at once from a reputable company. Much
easier than giving MIS screwdrivers. Let them worry about things.
Your company can then concentrate on other things.
Side 2: Hire a few people in addition to your tech support to be hardware
specialists, let them research and do the upgrading to the best
quality equipment they can find. Make upgrading an ongoing thing.
Your users are then happier with their machines.
Luci Ellis <eli...@dot.net.au> composed eloquently:
>In article <slrn51ris...@mercury.auburn.org>, r...@netcom.com wrote:
>> Luci Ellis <eli...@dot.net.au> composed eloquently:
>> >In article <slrn51q7c...@mercury.auburn.org>, r...@netcom.com wrote:
>> >> You're kidding, right? Ever try to do a motherboard swap on a
>> >> Packard Bell?
There you have it folks, the original argument that put us on
this tangent. :)
>> >> Building a box from the ground up is the best way to insure
>> >> upgradability.
>>
>> >Well, that's nice for you, but try telling that to, say, my mother.
>>
>> You mean you wouldn't build a box for your OWN MOM? That's cruel!
>
>I would, but she lives 800 miles away. So I'd build the box, drive
>fourteen hours down to Melbourne, install it. Gee, that's sure less
>expensive in my time than giving her the money for a Performa 6400 or a
>PowerBase when one comes out.
Ok, so that's a bit different.
>Anyway my Mum's just an example, she doesn't WANT a computer and has no
>use for one, except maybe for email. And Dad still has his 386.
If your mom doesn't want a box then I don't even have to try telling
that to her. (read 15 lines up.) This contradicts.
>> >Or to a company with a 3,000 unit installation. I'm sure either of those
>> >parties would like to build their boxes themselves.
>>
>> Someone's gotta build them, and a company of that size would be wise to
>> find out people who do. IMHO if your company is replacing all 3,000 of
>> those boxes at once we have a management problem.
>
>It could be a 10,000 unit company replacing 3000 of them at once. Or an
>expanding company putting in a new division for the first time. Or one of
>those companies the PC-advocates would like us to believe are dumping
>their Macs for PCs <grin>.
IMHO there should not be 1 manager directly responsible for any more
than about 500 boxes. I know it happens but it shouldn't. When that
happens, employee's concerns cannot be heard, and they start taking
productivity into their own hands, upgrading their machines while
breaking company policy.
>The point is that companies don't want to hire their own people just to
>put boxes together if the manufacturer can already do it. Putting together
>100,000 boxes a year will be cheaper per unit, because of economies of
>scale and specialisation, than hiring some people to assemble them
>on-site, and buying whatever equipment (electric screwdrivers or whatever)
>to help them.
On site or in Taiwan, someone's gotta do it, your choice... :)
(Not that I pretend to know where Packard Bells are assembled, where are
they built these days?)
Automation only goes so far. And how much is an electric screwdriver these
days anyway? Far less than you pay for a brand name sticker everywhere
else.
>And then once you've installed those boxes, you have to sack those people
>again. This isn't a smart way to run the company. You could instead get
>consultants, but they cost more per hour because of the nature of
>consultancy work.
Only if you insist on replacing all of those boxes at the same time.
People don't need the same amount of computing power - face it. Dumbly
upgrading everything at once will cost a company a *lot*. Listen to
your employees - ask them what they need. It could be that they need
something as simple as another hard drive or more ram. If your current
staff would be totally overwhelmed by this, delegate. And if you spread
the workload out over the year, there's no reason to keep hiring and
firing people all the time.
>> No, because that economy of scale isn't passed down to you. Or do you
>> work for Packard Bell and get a chunk?
>
>You didn't realise I am a Mac advocate on these groups <grin>?
Then you just had to get in an argument about Packard Bells, huh? :)
>> When you build your own box you get to choose. You can use shoddy parts
>> like everyone else or get some quality stuff.
>
>Well, there's the difference. I had in my head putting something together
>from Mac parts, when I could be buying from Power Computing. This "the
>companies use garbage" doesn't seem to come into it as much, Apple's
>latest troubles notwithstanding.
It does in the PC world. And as Mac cloning takes place, it'll happen
to Power PC's too. I heard they're putting EIDE drives in those things!
Eeewwwww... Is there anything left besides servers to keep SCSI prices
from going through the roof? (remember: economies of scale)
>> So it takes 6 hours to put it all together. You're gonna be using that
>> computer for a long time and you're gonna be a lot happier with it
>> than an unupgradable mess. How much do you make? $50 an hour? That's
>> $300... Ye gads, get off usenet! We gotta keep that money rolling in!
>
>I have a second job writing columns for a computer mag. UseNet is just one
>component of my research.... it gets me annoyed enough to write them
><grin>.
Aha! :) As for research, you learn a heck of a lot putting together
a box, you might wanna try it sometime.
I've found documentation is much, much better with the parts than the
whole thing. It's not dumbed down, there's no "the power button is
located at the lower right corner of the case" or "familiarize your-
self with the keyboard". You see, if Baz part from Foo Inc. doesn't
work in as many boxes as possible, Foo Inc. will go out of business.
This free-marketism effect is minimalized when you buy from only one
vendor. Their proprietary equipment doesn't work well or at all with
the other guy's stuff so you have to buy from them - at really
inflated prices.
Ok, so you use Macs, which have been PnP for a really long time.
Maybe you've been isolated from this. Then again, you don't have
the advantage of dozens of companies competing for your wallet -
yet. Things have gotten a lot better with PCI, hardware mixes and
matches better.
>> Packard Bell and others do not follow hardware platform
>> specifications. They design and use their own proprietary equipment.
>>
>> It's their way of cutting corners.
>
>What a shame it's never been profitable for them yet.
HUH? I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not - it makes no sense
either way. Whether anyone approves of them or not, Packard Bell
isn't exactly in the red - as far as I know. Can anyone in
the group round up some figures?
Luci Ellis
In article <m2ybj5w...@hubert.wustl.edu>, Alan Shutko
<a...@hubert.wustl.edu> wrote:
> >>>>> "LE" == Luci Ellis <eli...@dot.net.au> writes:
>
> LE> In article <slrn51q7c...@mercury.auburn.org>, r...@netcom.com
> LE> wrote:
> >> You're kidding, right? Ever try to do a motherboard swap on a
> >> Packard Bell?
> >>
> >> NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER buy from Packard Bell!
>
> LE> Well, that's nice for you, but try telling that to, say, my
> LE> mother. Or to a company with a 3,000 unit installation. I'm sure
> LE> either of those parties would like to build their boxes
> LE> themselves.
>
> While building their own boxes isn't for everyone, the poster was
> correct in suggesting that you avoid Packard Bell like the plague. If
> you ever want to do anything that wasn't bundled with the machine when
> you bought it (and sometimes even if it was), you are going to have a
> hell of a time.
Heh, heh,
you won't get me defending Packard Bell (heaven forbid! I AM a Mac
advocate in these groups). I was more thinking Performa Macs or Power
Computing Macs.
In fact, PB is YET to make a profit EVER, had to reschedule its accounts
payable to Intel (according to wire service reports, they wouldn't confirm
it) and has recently been taken over by NEC.
And they say Apple had trouble this year!
Luci Ellis
> Lemme see if I understand this right:
>
> Side 1: Buy new computers all at once from a reputable company.
No. Don't have to buy them all at once. But sometimes this happens because
of mass platform shifts.
> Much
> easier than giving MIS screwdrivers.
You obviously haven't met the MIS dept at my work.
> Let them worry about things.
> Your company can then concentrate on other things.
>
> Side 2: Hire a few people in addition to your tech support to be hardware
> specialists, let them research and do the upgrading to the best
> quality equipment they can find. Make upgrading an ongoing thing.
Were we talking upgrading, or buying whole new computers?
> Your users are then happier with their machines.
>
> Luci Ellis <eli...@dot.net.au> composed eloquently:
> >In article <slrn51ris...@mercury.auburn.org>, r...@netcom.com wrote:
> >> Luci Ellis <eli...@dot.net.au> composed eloquently:
> >> >In article <slrn51q7c...@mercury.auburn.org>, r...@netcom.com wrote:
> >> >> You're kidding, right? Ever try to do a motherboard swap on a
> >> >> Packard Bell?
>
> There you have it folks, the original argument that put us on
> this tangent. :)
>
> >> >> Building a box from the ground up is the best way to insure
> >> >> upgradability.
> >>
> >> >Well, that's nice for you, but try telling that to, say, my mother.
> >>
> >> You mean you wouldn't build a box for your OWN MOM? That's cruel!
> >
> >I would, but she lives 800 miles away. So I'd build the box, drive
> >fourteen hours down to Melbourne, install it. Gee, that's sure less
> >expensive in my time than giving her the money for a Performa 6400 or a
> >PowerBase when one comes out.
>
> Ok, so that's a bit different.
>
> >Anyway my Mum's just an example, she doesn't WANT a computer and has no
> >use for one, except maybe for email. And Dad still has his 386.
>
> If your mom doesn't want a box then I don't even have to try telling
> that to her. (read 15 lines up.) This contradicts.
Sorry. My REAL mother doesn't want a 'puter and doesn't need one. But
SUPPOSING SHE DID, she wouldn't want to put it together herself. That was
my point. Maybe I should have said my sister. She lives on the other side
of the world, has a PhD and DOES want a 'puter. She definitely wouldn't
want to put one together herself and I'm not about to put one together and
ship it to England, now (-:. The point doesn't contradict, it's just my
hypothetical example (a mother) doesn't in reality fit the hypothesis.
Perhaps we can use someone else's mother as an example. (-:
This is not something that points can be scored from, sorry.
>
> >> >Or to a company with a 3,000 unit installation. I'm sure either of those
> >> >parties would like to build their boxes themselves.
> >>
> >> Someone's gotta build them, and a company of that size would be wise to
> >> find out people who do. IMHO if your company is replacing all 3,000 of
> >> those boxes at once we have a management problem.
> >
> >It could be a 10,000 unit company replacing 3000 of them at once. Or an
> >expanding company putting in a new division for the first time. Or one of
> >those companies the PC-advocates would like us to believe are dumping
> >their Macs for PCs <grin>.
>
> IMHO there should not be 1 manager directly responsible for any more
> than about 500 boxes. I know it happens but it shouldn't. When that
> happens, employee's concerns cannot be heard, and they start taking
> productivity into their own hands, upgrading their machines while
> breaking company policy.
How does "number of managers" relate to "number of 'puters being replaced
at once?"
> >The point is that companies don't want to hire their own people just to
> >put boxes together if the manufacturer can already do it. Putting together
> >100,000 boxes a year will be cheaper per unit, because of economies of
> >scale and specialisation, than hiring some people to assemble them
> >on-site, and buying whatever equipment (electric screwdrivers or whatever)
> >to help them.
>
> On site or in Taiwan, someone's gotta do it, your choice... :)
The specialist manufacturer will be cheaper and more efficient in the long
run BECAUSE of specialisation.
> (Not that I pretend to know where Packard Bells are assembled, where are
> they built these days?)
Don't for a minute think I'm defending PB -- I am not -- the original
tangent was, as I recall, the idea that you could get a cheaper PC by
putting it together yourself. But economies of scale mean that for given
components, better to get the manufacturer to do it.
The argument was that Macs are price-competitive with name-brand PCs, so
the PC advocates then advocated putting them together yourself instead of
buying one whole. This would then be cheaper (sticker price) than the Mac,
but my point is that you have to cost out your time and once you do that,
it's not so cheap. Especially as a user putting boxes together won't be as
efficient per unit as a dedicated assembly plant.
> Automation only goes so far. And how much is an electric screwdriver these
> days anyway? Far less than you pay for a brand name sticker everywhere
> else.
Now you're quibbling.
The point is, with economies of scale and specialisation, an assembly
plant will be cheaper per unit assembled than end users / the customer
without specialised workshop layouts, tools, experience, skills.
Read Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations", especially the bit about the
pin factory. Specialisation promotes efficiency. That's one economic truth
we've known for centuries.
(however much the rest of my professional knowledge might be dubious (-:)
> >And then once you've installed those boxes, you have to sack those people
> >again. This isn't a smart way to run the company. You could instead get
> >consultants, but they cost more per hour because of the nature of
> >consultancy work.
>
> Only if you insist on replacing all of those boxes at the same time.
Okay, so you get ten. The dedicated PC assembler puts them together and
the IS staff install them. Then the assembler hands around for three days
while the next ten arrive.
(-:
> People don't need the same amount of computing power - face it. Dumbly
> upgrading everything at once will cost a company a *lot*. Listen to
> your employees - ask them what they need. It could be that they need
> something as simple as another hard drive or more ram. If your current
> staff would be totally overwhelmed by this, delegate. And if you spread
> the workload out over the year, there's no reason to keep hiring and
> firing people all the time.
>
> >> No, because that economy of scale isn't passed down to you. Or do you
> >> work for Packard Bell and get a chunk?
> >
> >You didn't realise I am a Mac advocate on these groups <grin>?
>
> Then you just had to get in an argument about Packard Bells, huh? :)
This argument started off as a "PCs are better quality than Macs" argument
if I recall the thread correctly. The "you have to be crazy to use a PB"
is a tangent I stayed away from. Open all the references in the refs line,
you'll get these posts:
This was the original thread:
******
<house.840559998@helios>
I learned my lesson with Apple way back in the Apple ][ days.
<snip>
I've warned people off Apple ever since. Probably lost
them close to half a million dollars in sales so far...
<jragosta-210...@ppp-2029.dca.net>
>What computers are you buying? Packard Bell? Dell? Even Compaq? You're not
>getting the level of support you'd be getting from Apple--your single bad
>experience notwithstanding.
<slrn51nopm...@beeble.mnscorp.com>
What you *are* getting (more in the case with Packard Bell and
low-cost 'clone' vendors) is a computer built from generic,
off-the-shelf components which will be easier to service and upgrade
than proprietary-architecture machines.
<slrn51q7c...@mercury.auburn.org>
You're kidding, right? Ever try to do a motherboard swap on a
Packard Bell?
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER buy from Packard Bell!
(or for that matter, any place with riser card motherboard design.)
Building a box from the ground up is the best way to insure
upgradability.
***********
You're right, there was a tangent. And it was you. I just got back to the
original argument.
BTW, any reason why your email address and the message ID on your posts
don't have the same domain?
> >> When you build your own box you get to choose. You can use shoddy parts
> >> like everyone else or get some quality stuff.
> >
> >Well, there's the difference. I had in my head putting something together
> >from Mac parts, when I could be buying from Power Computing. This "the
> >companies use garbage" doesn't seem to come into it as much, Apple's
> >latest troubles notwithstanding.
>
> It does in the PC world.
And the original argument was Macs vs PCs. Apple quality vs PC quality.
Mac prices vs PC prices. That PB and other "cheaper" name brand clones
aren't as cheap as they make out to be, just makes the Macs seem even more
price competitive for what you get.
> And as Mac cloning takes place, it'll happen
> to Power PC's too.
Except that the hardware architecture is being licensed, not the
free-for-all who'll buy DOS from MS that it was with PCs in the mid-1980s.
>I heard they're putting EIDE drives in those things!
> Eeewwwww... Is there anything left besides servers to keep SCSI prices
> from going through the roof? (remember: economies of scale)
Except that all Macs still come with external SCSI, so your second HD
would be SCSI. The IDE drives are the internals for lower-end Macs like my
LC 630.
> This free-marketism effect is minimalized when you buy from only one
> vendor. Their proprietary equipment doesn't work well or at all with
> the other guy's stuff so you have to buy from them - at really
> inflated prices.
But generic parts put together by reputable companies -- Apple, Power
Computing, whoever -- is better than me putting together generic parts and
will end up cheaper too once your time is costed out.
> Ok, so you use Macs, which have been PnP for a really long time.
> Maybe you've been isolated from this.
Yes, I have. And I'm glad. That's part of the Mac advantage -- the
original argument before the PB tangent -- your tangent.
>Then again, you don't have
> the advantage of dozens of companies competing for your wallet -
> yet. Things have gotten a lot better with PCI, hardware mixes and
> matches better.
The hardware has mixed pretty well for a number of years, except for the
CPU itself. I think I'll just go attach some cheap-as-dirt SVGA monitor to
my Mac now.
> >> Packard Bell and others do not follow hardware platform
> >> specifications. They design and use their own proprietary equipment.
> >>
> >> It's their way of cutting corners.
> >
> >What a shame it's never been profitable for them yet.
>
> HUH? I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not - it makes no sense
> either way. Whether anyone approves of them or not, Packard Bell
> isn't exactly in the red - as far as I know. Can anyone in
> the group round up some figures?
As far as I know, PB has never made a profit. It wasn't a public company
so it never reported publicly. I do have a PC Week article SOMEWHERE in my
study that quotes an analyst saying that the CEO of PB had "never made a
dollar" out of the business.
Also I have printouts of wire reports stating that the large debtor to
Intel (Intel as a public company has to report its balance sheet) was PB
who hadn't paid for all its CPUs. The debtor was never officially
identified, but there wasn't anyone else likely to owe Intel hundreds of
millions of dollars. The debt was subsequently rescheduled. If you want
quotes from the business wire reports, email me and I will dig them out
and type them up from the printout.
Not long after that, PB was taken over by NEC.
Robert Woodcock
>> Luci Ellis <eli...@dot.net.au> composed eloquently:
>Were we talking upgrading, or buying whole new computers?
Both. It depends on what your users need.
>This is not something that points can be scored from, sorry.
This is being scored? I thought points were being conveyed, not won. :)
>> IMHO there should not be 1 manager directly responsible for any more
>> than about 500 boxes. I know it happens but it shouldn't. When that
>> happens, employee's concerns cannot be heard, and they start taking
>> productivity into their own hands, upgrading their machines while
>> breaking company policy.
>
>How does "number of managers" relate to "number of 'puters being replaced
>at once?"
Why was that put in quotes? Did I say it or something? If so, please
respond to an argument somewhere near the place it's being discussed. :)
>The argument was that Macs are price-competitive with name-brand PCs, so
>the PC advocates then advocated putting them together yourself instead of
>buying one whole. This would then be cheaper (sticker price) than the Mac,
>but my point is that you have to cost out your time and once you do that,
>it's not so cheap. Especially as a user putting boxes together won't be as
>efficient per unit as a dedicated assembly plant.
>The point is, with economies of scale and specialisation, an assembly
>plant will be cheaper per unit assembled than end users / the customer
>without specialised workshop layouts, tools, experience, skills.
Very, very true. Until you factor in profit margins. :) And I infer from
your closing paragraphs that the profit margin is not at the factory level
but at the retail level. (Unless you can get numbers on that too :)
>> >And then once you've installed those boxes, you have to sack those people
>> >again. This isn't a smart way to run the company. You could instead get
>> >consultants, but they cost more per hour because of the nature of
>> >consultancy work.
>>
>> Only if you insist on replacing all of those boxes at the same time.
>
>Okay, so you get ten. The dedicated PC assembler puts them together and
>the IS staff install them. Then the assembler hands around for three days
>while the next ten arrive.
>
>(-:
Then you have your assembler work part time. Or it may turn out that one
of your IS guys is a hardware hotshot who would rather do that than run
around all day telling people that they're printer doesn't work 'cuz
someone tripped on the cord and unplugged it :)
Be flexible.
>> People don't need the same amount of computing power - face it. Dumbly
>> upgrading everything at once will cost a company a *lot*. Listen to
>> your employees - ask them what they need. It could be that they need
>> something as simple as another hard drive or more ram. If your current
>> staff would be totally overwhelmed by this, delegate. And if you spread
>> the workload out over the year, there's no reason to keep hiring and
>> firing people all the time.
>>
>This argument started off as a "PCs are better quality than Macs" argument
>if I recall the thread correctly. The "you have to be crazy to use a PB"
>is a tangent I stayed away from.
I did not start it, I responded to the person who started it:
><slrn51nopm...@beeble.mnscorp.com>
>What you *are* getting (more in the case with Packard Bell and
>low-cost 'clone' vendors) is a computer built from generic,
>off-the-shelf components which will be easier to service and upgrade
>than proprietary-architecture machines.
And if you had stayed away from it, we wouldn't be having this
discussion. :)
>BTW, any reason why your email address and the message ID on your posts
>don't have the same domain?
slrn assumes I'm on a box with a real hostname and so uses that FQDN
for a message-id. I could rename it to one of netcom's machines but
that wouldn't be quite honest either, would it? :)
>> >Well, there's the difference. I had in my head putting something together
>> >from Mac parts, when I could be buying from Power Computing. This "the
>> >companies use garbage" doesn't seem to come into it as much, Apple's
>> >latest troubles notwithstanding.
>>
>> It does in the PC world.
>
>And the original argument was Macs vs PCs. Apple quality vs PC quality.
>Mac prices vs PC prices. That PB and other "cheaper" name brand clones
>aren't as cheap as they make out to be, just makes the Macs seem even more
>price competitive for what you get.
How much does (for example) $1500 get you?
>Except that all Macs still come with external SCSI, so your second HD
>would be SCSI. The IDE drives are the internals for lower-end Macs like my
>LC 630.
"IDE for lower-end"... Hmmm... Doesn't sound too much different than
PC's these days. Not quite as bad, but not much different.
Time will tell if it gets better or worse.
>> This free-marketism effect is minimalized when you buy from only one
>> vendor. Their proprietary equipment doesn't work well or at all with
>> the other guy's stuff so you have to buy from them - at really
>> inflated prices.
>
>But generic parts put together by reputable companies -- Apple, Power
>Computing, whoever -- is better than me putting together generic parts and
>will end up cheaper too once your time is costed out.
If it's the exact same part from the exact same company (I'm comparing
"generic" and "generic" here :) why is the part better if you don't
touch it? Are you jynxed? :)
And remember not everyone's time is worth as much as yours.
>> Then again, you don't have the advantage of dozens of companies
>> competing for your wallet - yet. Things have gotten a lot better
>> with PCI, hardware mixes and matches better.
>
>The hardware has mixed pretty well for a number of years, except for the
>CPU itself. I think I'll just go attach some cheap-as-dirt SVGA monitor to
>my Mac now.
I'm not talking about monitors. Those have been standardized for a long
time now. I'm talking about the slightly more nitty-gritty like expansion
cards. Or am I completely wrong that you can put a PC PCI card in a
PCI Mac? (driver problems notwithstanding) They seem to be doing that
with the PCI BeBox...
>As far as I know, PB has never made a profit. It wasn't a public company
>so it never reported publicly. I do have a PC Week article SOMEWHERE in my
>study that quotes an analyst saying that the CEO of PB had "never made a
>dollar" out of the business.
>Also I have printouts of wire reports stating that the large debtor to
>Intel (Intel as a public company has to report its balance sheet) was PB
>who hadn't paid for all its CPUs. The debtor was never officially
>identified, but there wasn't anyone else likely to owe Intel hundreds of
>millions of dollars. The debt was subsequently rescheduled. If you want
>quotes from the business wire reports, email me and I will dig them out
>and type them up from the printout.
>
>Not long after that, PB was taken over by NEC.
Ok, I'm wrong here. But I'm also *extremely* curious. :)
Please mail me that stuff.
Terry Kyriacopoulos
On 23 Aug 1996, Alan Shutko wrote:
> >>>>> "TK" == Terry Kyriacopoulos <ter...@interlog.com> writes:
>
> TK> Do you ever wonder why so much effort was made to produce a UNIX
> TK> clone (Linux) on the PC platform for free. Would the Linux
> TK> developers volunteer to do this if they thought the PC wasn't
> TK> worth it?
>
> Nope. Probably because they thought DOS wasn't worth it.
>
> Check out the kernel sources sometime. It has some pretty nasty
> things to say about Intel and PC architecture.
All true. But the Mac was still a closed system when the Linux project
began, leaving the PC as the only sensible platform. With the new
Power Macs and MKLinux in the works, the Macintosh is getting some
attention among those (like me) who've been put off by its past
proprietary design.
But consider this: Don't you think Apple opened up the Mac *in response*
to the success of PC-Linux, thinking that was pulling away potential Mac
buyers? It couldn't possibly be Windows/Win95, could it? (I'd hate to
think so. :-)
Joe Ragosta
In article <Pine.LNX.3.91.960824004425.58B-100000@dita>, Terry
Kyriacopoulos <ter...@interlog.com> wrote:
>
> And that's a crucial advantage. Like it or not, we're stuck with it.
> It's economics, not technology, that fuels PC sales.
Not really. It's generally marketing. Macs have been demonstrated time and
time again to be less expensive to own than PCs. If economics were driving
the market, the market shares would be reversed.
> Linux is (currently) unavailable on the Mac. Enough said.
You're wrong. Enough said.
>
> It was that *annoying* sound the keys made -- worse than a PET :-)
> Workstation class machine? Is that how you define a decently manufactured
> computer? Even in 1984, that tiny b/w monitor was shabby. High
> resolution as long as you keep your nose six inches away. Thank you,
> but I'd rather have a *choice* of monitors.
Maybe no one has told you, but you've had your choice of monitors on the
Mac since around 1985. And choosing a computer on the basis of the
keyboard sound seems a little, let's say, shallow.
>
> The only major problem with the original PC box was the huge footprint.
> The mini-tower case is a big improvement.
The huge footprint. And 640K. and IRQs, and lack of PnP, and hundreds of
other things.
Luci Ellis
In article <jragosta-260...@ppp-4009.dca.net>, jrag...@dca.net
(Joe Ragosta) wrote:
> In article <Pine.LNX.3.91.960824004425.58B-100000@dita>, Terry
> Kyriacopoulos <ter...@interlog.com> wrote:
> > It was that *annoying* sound the keys made -- worse than a PET :-)
> > Workstation class machine? Is that how you define a decently manufactured
> > computer? Even in 1984, that tiny b/w monitor was shabby. High
> > resolution as long as you keep your nose six inches away. Thank you,
> > but I'd rather have a *choice* of monitors.
>
> Maybe no one has told you, but you've had your choice of monitors on the
> Mac since around 1985. And choosing a computer on the basis of the
> keyboard sound seems a little, let's say, shallow.
To be fair, I made an issue out of keyboard choices at work. Being a
person with chronic pain due to spinal trouble, the resistance the
keyboard gives is important. The IBM keyboards were too "clicky" for me
and made my hands hurt. They gave me a Compaq one and that's okay. The
current model of Apple Extended Keyboard is even better for me.
But this was really a typical argument by a PC-advocate: mention something
from _1984_, forget that there have been third-party options on both sides
of the fence. My first Mac had a third-party keyboard.
It amazes me that something about the 128k Mac from 1984 is considered a
legitimate criticism about the Mac now. But if I said something like...
"gee the old XTs are so _ugly_ and clunky and slow and they won't run
Win95...." the PC advocates would no doubt jump right down my throat.
Regards,
Michael Rousseau
I agree thoroughly. I loved the Mac OS and Sun OS before I got into
NEXTSTEP. Forget it; NEXTSTEP rocks. NEXTSTEP is the evolution of
the adolescent Mac OS. It has power and robustness, the best SysAdmin
tools and structure BY FAR (God, does NIS+ ever suck!), and an
inspired interface that actually empowers every single user regardless
of the app the are in.
I work in Solaris and 'Doze now. I didn't make a job switch because
of any "superiority" in Sun's or Micro$loth's OSes. I miss the beauty
of NEXTSTEP daily. Unfortunately, it really doesn't offer my the
opportunity to live where I want to live versus Solaris/'Doze.
Difficult, inelegant shit have inherited the desktop (thought I do
like Solaris with CDE).
I just installed OpenStep on my Sparc, and even without NetInfo, it
brought back really good memories of when I was a NEXTSTEP SysAdmin,
hobnobbing at NEXTSTEP Expo, draggin and dropping into NEXTMail
without any though of compatibility problems.
Yes, I am an OS bigot. Having used all of the major UNIXes and Linux
in my job, plus the non-multithreaded non-multitasking PC OSes, I
still say NEXTSTEP is king of the hill. In 1993, they were flying
supersonic while Microsoft was trying to fly a fabric biplane. So
sad....
Mike Rousseau
SysAdmin/Network Dweeb
City of Aspen, CO
=============================================================
My opinions frighten small children and Windoze lovers.
=============================================================John
Kheit wrote:
>
> jrag...@dca.net (Joe Ragosta) wrote:
> > I have never seen a normal human being compare the Mac OS, Windows and
> Unix systems side by side and come away saying, "Gee, I really prefer the
> way Windows and Unix work."
>
> I have, regardless of how you define normal... More 'technically' inclined
> people like the robust nature of Unix. However, even novices that have
> seen/used NEXT/OPENSTEP have come away saying that they prefer the way it
> works to MacOS and windows.
> --
> Thanks, be well, take care, later, John Kheit )^> %^) =^)
>
> monoChrome, Inc. | New York Law School
> NEXTSTEP Developer | Opinions expressed represent me only
> MIME, SUN, & NeXTmail OK | http://cnj.digex.net/~jkheit
> mailto:jkh...@cnj.digex.net | Telepathy...It's coming...
Charles Forsythe
mmalcolm crawford wrote:
> ...initial investment NEXTSTEP is relatively cheap in one
> market sector at least, and it's till not as popular as might be
> expected.
Ummm, have you ever priced a system *capable* of running NeXTStep for
Intel? You need a true-color PCI graphics card and 32-64Mb of memory.
A really, really, fast Pentium helps and WOE TO THOSE with slow disks.
I think NeXTStep is great and I would even be running it except I can't
afford the US$6K+ computer just for grins. NeXTStep is NOT CHEAP to
run, even if you get the OS for free!
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Forsythe -- Internet and Intranet Technology Services
EDS Email Address: cfor...@mmts.eds.com / EDS Phone: (214) 604-2933
Home Email Address: fors...@onramp.net / Home Phone:(214) 828-2139
mmalcolm crawford
On 08/29/96, Charles Forsythe wrote:
> mmalcolm crawford wrote:
> > ...initial investment NEXTSTEP is relatively cheap in one
> > market sector at least, and it's till not as popular as might be
> > expected.
>
> Ummm, have you ever priced a system *capable* of running NeXTStep for
> Intel? You need a true-color PCI graphics card and 32-64Mb of memory.
> A really, really, fast Pentium helps and WOE TO THOSE with slow disks.
>
run W95 instead (it's for other people to use).
You don't actually *need* a "true-color PCI graphics card and 32-64Mb of
memory": if you want to run in 640x480 2-bit grey then you don't need a
graphics card at all. If your aspirations are higher, then you pay more for
a card, exactly as you would running Windows / whatever.
As for 32-64 MB RAM: depends on what you wnat your system to do, and how
quickly: you can easily get away with 16MB; you're more comforatble with 32,
as is again the case with Windows (the PC I just got has 32 MB -- our
Computing Services' recommendation for *Windows*).
As for the chip -- well, again, the faster the better; this is hardly unique
to NEXTSTEP. For W95 again we're recommended not to get anthing less than a
P90; I've been runnig NEXTSTEP on a 486-100 for a long time very happily, and
a 486-66 for a while before than. More happily, I suspect, than if I'd been
running Windows.
> I think NeXTStep is great and I would even be running it except I can't
> afford the US$6K+ computer just for grins. NeXTStep is NOT CHEAP to
> run, even if you get the OS for free!
>
Umm, you're confusing the cost of entry with cost of ownership. As I suggest
above, cost of entry isn't really much different to that for W95, and IMHO
cost of ownership is less.
Have *you* really sat down and priced things properly?
(I'm sorry if this *sounds* belligerent, it's not supposed to be, it's more
sort of "earnest" than angry.)
Best wishes,
mmalc.
--
Paul Lynch
In <322528...@mmts.eds.com> Charles Forsythe wrote:
> mmalcolm crawford wrote:
> > ...initial investment NEXTSTEP is relatively cheap in one
> > market sector at least, and it's till not as popular as might be
> > expected.
>
> Ummm, have you ever priced a system *capable* of running NeXTStep for
> Intel? You need a true-color PCI graphics card and 32-64Mb of memory.
> A really, really, fast Pentium helps and WOE TO THOSE with slow disks.
Frequently (speaking for both myself and mmalcolm). If you really want to
price up a top end machine, with 64Mb RAM, 200MHz PPro, 2Gb fast SCSI,
decent ethernet card, good video and good 17" monitor, and all that, it
will indeed cost you the $6,000 + you suggest.
But a couple of years ago we were running NeXTSTEP happily on 32Mb 486/66
machines. I would suggest that a good starter system would be 486/100,
32Mb, etc. This would cost (in the UK, which is *expensive*) less than
$3,000. I dare say that it would be possible to spec out a good starter
NeXTSTEP machine for a lot less than this.
The configuration, incidentally, is about the same as you really need for
NT, and the only difference from a starter Windows 95 system is that we
expect more RAM, but I suspect this is because we are more realistic in
our expectations, not that Win95 needs less RAM than NeXTSTEP.
[groups trimmed]
Paul
--
Paul Lynch (NeXTmail) pa...@plsys.co.uk
Tel: (01494)432422 P & L Systems
Fax: (01494)432478 http://www.plsys.co.uk/~paul
Jerry Kuch
In article <322528...@mmts.eds.com>,
Charles Forsythe <cfor...@mmts.eds.com> wrote:
>mmalcolm crawford wrote:
>> ...initial investment NEXTSTEP is relatively cheap in one
>> market sector at least, and it's till not as popular as might be
>> expected.
>
>Ummm, have you ever priced a system *capable* of running NeXTStep for
>Intel? You need a true-color PCI graphics card and 32-64Mb of memory.
>A really, really, fast Pentium helps and WOE TO THOSE with slow disks.
The price of 32MB of memory is now about $200 (which is about 1/5 of
what it was a year and a half ago) and decent PCI graphics cards are
becoming the norm (although it's still true that NEXTSTEP doesn't have
the ubiquitous driver support Windows does).
As of NS/Intel 3.2, a 486DX2/66 was a perfectly usable machine and a DX4/100
was quite pleasant. Both are quite a bit snappier than black hardware was,
and black hardware was pretty usable after the 68030 with 8MB of RAM days
came to an end.
A nice fast Pentium is great and all, but not necessary to make a decent
NEXTSTEP based Intel station.
As for the disk solution... if you get a well under $100 NCR 53C810 based
SCSI card, you can get sufficiently good disk performance that you won't
be complaining (it's faster than black hardware was).
Sure you probably won't have much luck installing NEXTSTEP on a generic
PC clone discount package from the shop down the street, but if the shop
is willing to let you mix and match a couple of the components to ensure
compatability and decent performance you can get out with a perfectly
working machine without spend too much more than the advertised vanilla
package would have cost you. Eighteen months ago this was much less true
since the memory especially cost a lot more then.
>I think NeXTStep is great and I would even be running it except I can't
>afford the US$6K+ computer just for grins. NeXTStep is NOT CHEAP to
>run, even if you get the OS for free!
I think you could get by for a lot less than $6K... probably closer to
$2K or so.
d...@misckit.com
Charles Forsythe <cfor...@mmts.eds.com> wrote:
> Ummm, have you ever priced a system *capable* of running NeXTStep for
> Intel? You need a true-color PCI graphics card and 32-64Mb of memory.
> A really, really, fast Pentium helps and WOE TO THOSE with slow disks.
>
> afford the US$6K+ computer just for grins. NeXTStep is NOT CHEAP to
> run, even if you get the OS for free!
That's a gross exxageration if I've ever seen one.
The facts:
I just bought what I'd consider a NEXTSTEP "dream machine" for
just about $5500 US and it included:
* Pentium Pro 200 (Intel Venus motherboard)
* 64MB RAM
* Nanao F2-21 21" monitor
* MGA Millenium 4MB
* Cogent PCI ethernet
* Adaptec 2940UW SCSI
* Quantum Atlas 4.3 GB SCSI drive
* Toshiba 4X EIDE CDROM
* Ensoniq Soundscape Elite
* Miscrosoft ergonomic keyboard, Logitec mouse
* US Robotics Courier V.Everything external modem
Frankly, I went quite overboard. I wanted a killer of a machine,
and aimed at the best and most I could afford right now, which is
more than the basic NEXTSTEP user really needs. (Those who know me
know that I do things that really push my machines hard...) A
system that is capable of running NEXTSTEP comfortably--without
overkill--could be put together for a lot less money. I think you
could do it _easily_ for under $4000 US, perhaps as low as the
$2000 US price point. (In fact, the first plan I put together
would have cost me in the $3000 range; I decided to scrap that and
just "go for it". Which I think I accomplished... :-) )
If you want to get a cheaper machine than mine, two places you
could start--which would cut about $2k of the price of the machine
I bought--would be to downgrade to a 2GB EIDE hard drive and a 17"
monitor. Both of those would do just fine for running NEXTSTEP.
And a P90 can run NEXTSTEP quite well, so you don't *have* to have
the hottest iron in town to still enjoy NEXTSTEP. The soundcard
isn't a necessity, the modem could be internal instead of external,
there are cheaper keyboards/mice out there, not everyone needs an
ethernet card, and a much cheaper video card would still be
acceptable. RAM is so cheap, I wouldn't bother to buy a machine
with less that 64MB, but 32MB is perfectly fine for running
NEXTSTEP 3.3.
So there are plenty of places to trim down from what I did and
still have a decent machine. Those aware of current PC prices
should realize about now that any machine that can run Win95 really
well ought to do OK for NEXTSTEP, too, as long as the right drivers
are available. So it doesn't have to be expensive.
And finally, lest anyone think that I'm a total NEXTSTEP bigot,
the machine will initially be running WinNT, Win95, and OPENSTEP
(aka NEXTSTEP 4.0). I also plan to add Slowlaris, er, Solaris, and
possibly Linux and/or FreeBSD in the future. (The latter ones will
await a hard drive expansion before I add them to the palette. :-))
--
Later,
-Don Yacktman
d...@misckit.com
<a href="http://www.misckit.com/don.html">My home page</a>
Jerry Kuch
In article <503s56$t...@bignews.shef.ac.uk>,
mmalcolm crawford <m.cra...@shef.ac.uk> wrote:
>On 08/29/96, Charles Forsythe wrote:
>> mmalcolm crawford wrote:
>> > ...initial investment NEXTSTEP is relatively cheap in one
>> > market sector at least, and it's till not as popular as might be
>> > expected.
>
>memory": if you want to run in 640x480 2-bit grey then you don't need a
>graphics card at all. If your aspirations are higher, then you pay more for
>a card, exactly as you would running Windows / whatever.
It's also worth pointing out that whereas Windows 3.1 was sufferable in
640 x 480, NEXTSTEP is an absolute nightmare in this mode. Each default
sized NEXTSTEP icon takes up four times the pixel space of a 32 x 32
Windows icon and this quickly leads to a dock and File Viewer that's unusably
huge.
But inexpensive PCI cards that can do 1024 x 768 (good size for NEXTSTEP)
or 1152 x 864, or similar, and that have NEXTSTEP driver support aren't
hard to find.
>As for 32-64 MB RAM: depends on what you wnat your system to do, and how
>quickly: you can easily get away with 16MB; you're more comforatble with 32,
>as is again the case with Windows (the PC I just got has 32 MB -- our
>Computing Services' recommendation for *Windows*).
I'd say 16MB for NEXTSTEP in color isn't enough, since the backing stores
for color windows eat this up pretty fast. 24MB is decent though and 32MB
good.
>As for the chip -- well, again, the faster the better; this is hardly unique
>to NEXTSTEP. For W95 again we're recommended not to get anthing less than a
>P90; I've been runnig NEXTSTEP on a 486-100 for a long time very happily, and
>a 486-66 for a while before than. More happily, I suspect, than if I'd been
>running Windows.
Agreed... 486/100 works just fine. Having "enough" memory makes more of a
difference for general use than having the latest greatest CPU; dramatically
so with NEXTSTEP.
Arthur D. Jerijian
In article <m2wwypw...@hubert.wustl.edu>, Alan Shutko wrote:
>>>>>> "TK" == Terry Kyriacopoulos <ter...@interlog.com> writes:
>
>TK> Do you ever wonder why so much effort was made to produce a UNIX
>TK> clone (Linux) on the PC platform for free. Would the Linux
>TK> developers volunteer to do this if they thought the PC wasn't
>TK> worth it?
>
>Nope. Probably because they thought DOS wasn't worth it.
Isn't it because Linus thought that Minix wasn't worth it?
>Check out the kernel sources sometime. It has some pretty nasty
>things to say about Intel and PC architecture.
I haven't dug that deep into the sources, but I did see a comment
(in setup.S, I think) where the IBM engineers "should get shot"
for making it hell to program their interrupt chips. :*)
--Arthur
David Corn
On Thu, 29 Aug 1996 13:20:49 +0800, Charles Forsythe
<cfor...@mmts.eds.com> wrote:
>Ummm, have you ever priced a system *capable* of running NeXTStep for
>Intel? You need a true-color PCI graphics card and 32-64Mb of memory.
>A really, really, fast Pentium helps and WOE TO THOSE with slow disks.
So get a P133 for $250, and 64M RAM for $400. That's $650. Add in
the other parts, and for $1000 or so you're in business.
That isn't much, if you REALLY want NS. That's not much at all. The
OS, and the small market, make it impractical, not the RAM
requirements; RAM's cheap.
Jaliya Jayawardena
>Yes, I am an OS bigot. Having used all of the major UNIXes and Linux
>in my job, plus the non-multithreaded non-multitasking PC OSes, I
>still say NEXTSTEP is king of the hill. In 1993, they were flying
>supersonic while Microsoft was trying to fly a fabric biplane. So
>sad....
I know. I was slavering for a NextStation for so long. I was
hoping that Steve Jobs would lose his arrogance long enough to
collaborate with MS and snap the Next interface onto 95. Imagine
that...almost complete acceptance and an interface that really would
rule. Oh, well. I guess it would've been too good.
Jaliya
mmalcolm crawford
On 08/31/96, Jaliya Jayawardena wrote:
> I know. I was slavering for a NextStation for so long. I was
> hoping that Steve Jobs would lose his arrogance long enough to
> collaborate with MS and snap the Next interface onto 95. Imagine
> that...almost complete acceptance and an interface that really would
> rule. Oh, well. I guess it would've been too good.
>
most aesthetically-pleasing UI I've ever seen, the whole point about its
beauty is that it's a lot more than skin deep. Applications and their
components work together in an elegant and consistent fashion that I just
don't see with Windows. The way that the workspace is organised to help the
user to be more productive is more than just the use of pretty icons, it's
due to clarity of design and sound implementation; something again I just
don't see in Windows.
What we are about to see is OpenStep on NT: with this developer product NeXT
uses the standard NT interface, but puts its own object layer underneath.
We'll have to see if MicroSoft can ever make the user experience as good as
the technology that can now underlie it.
I'm not holding my breath. Any company that can deliver a new OS in 1995
that has a copy panel showing poor bitmaps of little bits of paper flying
from one representation of a folder to another, with a useless progress bar
which is empty for most of the time as it shows the progress throughthe
current document rather than the whole job, and which seems to interrupt
copying in odd ways if you close it, simply does not inspire confidence.
Best wishes,
mmalc.
--
John Rudd
In <322528...@mmts.eds.com> Charles Forsythe wrote:
[]mmalcolm crawford wrote:
[]> ...initial investment NEXTSTEP is relatively cheap in one
[]> market sector at least, and it's till not as popular as might be
[]> expected.
[]Ummm, have you ever priced a system *capable* of running NeXTStep for
[]Intel? You need a true-color PCI graphics card and 32-64Mb of memory.
[]A really, really, fast Pentium helps and WOE TO THOSE with slow disks.
[]I think NeXTStep is great and I would even be running it except I can't
[]afford the US$6K+ computer just for grins. NeXTStep is NOT CHEAP to
[]run, even if you get the OS for free!
My 486/33 with ATI Graphics Ultra Pro (vesa local bus) with 2mb vram and 16mb
ram
on a 420 mb IDE hard drive (and pro-audio basic sound card.. though you could
use a
$30 soundblaser 16) runs Nextstep just fine.. and I have a 14" monitor..
You could buy
my machine today for probably around $1000.00 and definitely for less than
$1500.
(it was $2500 new). Oh, and I have an adaptek 1542c and sony 1x scsi cdrom.
$6k ... *salivate* What I wouldn't give to have a $6k box for Nextstep at
home..