#Scala Saves Time
4 messages in this thread
Paul,
On OS/2, I specifically put that word "personally" in my post because I was
referring to a personal purchase. I already have an NT box at work.
I have six PC's in my office (plus an Amiga), but I use ONLY an Amiga
at home. Spending thousands of dollars out of MY pocket for
DOS/Windows is out of the question; and I can always bring home my
laptop for spot work.
Now that I am facing again spending thousands of dollars, I want to at
least not lose anything I already have. Like 32-bits. Like
pre-emptive multitasking. Like long file names. I also don't want to
again become an expert on a system with no presence in my job. My
company is a Microsoft shop. No Macs. No Unix on the desktop. No
Ataris. No Nextstep. No OS/2. And I have the only Amiga in the
company.
If I HAVE to learn a new OS, this time it will be something I can use
in both home and work environments.
Finally, if you talk to IBM salespeople, it is evident that IBM wants
REAL BAD to get back to their former dominant position in the
computer industry. No problem there. But when I start picking their
brains for the "why's" behind their new products, all I ever get is
blank stares. They have some products, they want to sell them. But
they don't need no steenking vision!
Not in a million years.
Tab-
Yah, unfortunately, Gerstner has specifically come out *against* vision. 🙁
Mr. Zombie
Paul,
"Yah, unfortunately, Gerstner has specifically come out *against* vision."
Yeah, I caught that, too. I was pretty amazed just like everyone else.
The PowerPC is an excellent example. Byte magazine had their first article on
the PowerPC in February 1992. The IEEE computer magazines have been saturated
with PowerPC articles. I have been following this saga from day one; not
because I am against "Intel's stranglehold," but because, as an Amiga owner and
user, I am against Micros**t's stranglehold.
Two and a half years later, the first PowerPC machines appear. Apple
does well with them; positioning them as the Apple vision running
four times faster. IBM? Hey, dude. It's our new box. And each is
incompatible with the other and available from exactly one
manufacturer. I know that Apple has just entered into some PowerMac
clone agreements, but there is a large industry opinion that this is
too little, too late. In short, for IBM, three years of relentless
hype has yielded another engineering curiousity.
Someone is certainly taking Gerstner's directive to heart.
Tab Trepagnier
Cruising on AutoPilot from Beaumont, Texas
Tab-
I don't think even Apple did all that well. As far as the emulation part goes,
it's a genuine technical feat of which they should be proud. But they should
have put something really wonderful in PowerMacs that could *only* be done with
the CPU power of a PowerMac. They just aren't selling PowerMacs like they'd
been hoping–and worse, the biggest seller is the 6100, not the 7100, like
they'd thought, which is kind of analogous to the 500/2000 problem.
And unfortunately, Apple and IBM had a lull just at the wrong time.
If they hadn't diddled away two years which they *could* have spent
carrying out their agreements, PowerPC boxes might have turned out to
be real competitors to Wintel. And it's not that I like Apple or IBM
much either–but MS and Intel have managed to come up with a lot of
brain dead chips and schizophrenic software beteen them–and they're
the only ones in a position (at one time, anyway) to challenge them.
And at least Gershwin *could* be a decent OS, unlike Win95.
Of course what I wish for most is least likely to happen–the real
resurrection and successive thriving of the Amiga.
Mr. Zombie