CompuServe Messages

Jack; Let me start with the "I am an anti-DOS bigot!" Understand that I hate DOS and consider it to have been the first and one of the biggest steps backward that the micro-computer industry ever took. Even HeathKit's HDOS was a very advanced OS compared to DOS (circa 1976). Now running '486 boxes is not something that I do often or for long periods of time (it just seems that way). The only '486 boxes that I have worked with are pretty well top end machines (>$10K not counting monitor and drives). These machines seem to compare pretty favorably to my Amiga 3000 system. Disk i/o appears at times to be faster and at other times to be slower. Screen update appears about the same except that when comparing windowing operations the Ami is clearly faster. I have not really done enough with the '040 to really get a good feel for comparison but first impressions (as wrong as they might be) are that a '486 would not keep up in any real world activity. Again you need to temper these comments with my almost vicious hate of Intel and MicroSloth. OTOH, you also need to keep in mind that the comparision machines are fast, 20 MB ram, top end graphics boards, gigabyte scsi II's with $3K monitors. These are about as serious as you can get with a PC. -bill