CompuServe Messages

Harold, *** QUOTING *** Microsoft Works is a critical product for education markets, e.g. K-12 and collegiate. It is a wildly successful product for home users of both MS-DOS machines and the Macintosh. It is fully integrated, unlike the present Amiga offerings. (I am thinking of Platinum_Works! and the Gold Disk offering for the 2000HD/P). *** UNQUOTE *** You've struck a nerve here. I am refering to sentence #3 in the above quote. In response to that statement I can only say one thing: THANK GOD! (Dragging out the soap box…) Integrated programs have NO PLACE on the Amiga. Period. Integrated programs were designed specifically to meet the needs of computers that could only one run program at a time and could not share data easily. Yes, it is nice to have a word processor, spreadsheet, database and accounting package that are all designed around each other, but what happens if you don't like the word processor? Specific case in point — Lattice/SAS-C and the LSE editor. The LSE editor was designed to be an integral part of the Lattice (now SAS) C developing environment. Programs could be run from within it; errors were flagged in the file, etc. However, it was designed around memacs, a program that makes me want to quit computing. Now, on a different computer you'd either use LSE or give up the interactive environment. On the Amiga, thanks to multitasking and ARexx, I can use Cygnus Ed Pro (or any other editor with an ARexx port) and be "fully integrated". If Window's "dynamic data exchange" ever is used properly, it can provide a similar effect. OS/2 has Rexx and System 7 now has data sharing for similar effects. Hopefully, together they will spell the demise of "fully integrated" programs like MS-Works. Programs like MS-WORKS are pigs in the respect that they try to do everything well (pleasing all of the people all of the time). To do this MS-WORKS and similar programs hog much of the systems resources, to say nothing of RAM. Programs should do their main task as efficiently as possible. If you want bells & whistles, fine, just don't make them part of the main program (thus hogging RAM). You may use a thesaurus, spell checker, grammar checker and print spooler with your setup, but I don't want it hogging my system's resources. Data should be sent from the word processor, via ARexx, to each individual program in turn. They can be made memory resident if used often but otherwise they aren't loaded until called. Memory resident routines sit quietly until something calls them. My main word processor is Cygnus Ed, and I have a grammar checker and spelling checker sitting on my hard disk. Since Cygnus Ed concentrates just on text, it is much faster responding than something like Word Perfect (which was a joke on the Amiga with it's super-slow screen updates). Spell checking a document doesn't tie up my word processor, either. If programs were designed to do one main job, and do it well, things would be a lot easier for those of us who don't need all the bells & whistles. It'd be easier for those who want them, too. Final point: most biggie MS-DOS programs (MS-WORKS, Wordperfect, dBASE IV, etc.) ship with anywhere from 5 to 25 disks and require a few megs of hard disk space, to say nothing of RAM. I hope I never see that on an Amiga. (Putting soapbox away.) Not to ge on your case. You've a number of valid points, though I seriously doubt the validity of Commodore pushing another machine. I think you will see CBM push CDTV as a consumer unit; the A500 as a home/educational machine and the A3000 series as the professional units. I can see no good future for the A2000 other than as a case for a Toaster or a BBS host with a lot of lines. The high density drive, 8-bit chip set and 16-bit sound will most likely be available for the A3000 series and up only, since the limited bandwidth on the A500/2000 motherboard would present a lot of problems. I can also see an Amiga 4000 based off of a RISC chip with AmigaDOS 3.0 that is about 50% compatible with 2.04. I'd be *very* happy is Commodore announced it's intention to build a RISC/6000 based machine and license the graphics library from Silicon Graphics. Yum! -Chas