NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #20/NN_1992_20.iso/spool/comp/sys/atari/st/13663

Text File | 1992-09-11 | 3.4 KB | 64 lines

Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!sun4nl!wn1.sci.kun.nl!cs.kun.nl!leonp
From: [e-mail] (Leon Pillich)
Subject: Re: Is Falcon worth buying?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (NUnet News Owner)
Organization: University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 09:41:41 GMT
Lines: 52

Well, just a couple of thoughts.
I want to buy a new computer within a year (I now own a 1040 and I'm happy
with it and I wont sell it) and I'm making a few considerations now:
- I want to have multitasking. Why? Simple because it permits me to
  edit a text, and still run my favourite terminal emulator and gcc
  in the background. This is great for downloading and such. Moreover it is
  nice to have multitasking in that you can have several applications active
  (not necessarily running), so you can switch easily: just click its
  window.
- I need lots of memory (at least 4meg for an atari and 6 meg for a pc).
  This is neede for multitasking, latex, c++ etc.
- I want a windowing system. I just like them and it makes me much
  more productive. It also makes multitasking sensible. This window
  system needs to be easy to program, that is I want easy access to developer
  software etc. Good looks for the system is also nice. For all this
  I need high resolution (800*600 or in that range) and maybe colour.
- I need raw horse power for doing neat things, like latex, dtp, maybe
  image processing.

The possibilities are:
- Buying a MAC II or LCII. A great os (I DO like System 7). Great
  software support and network support (though I don't need that), but
  expensive, hard to program (really) and limited multitasking, though
  multifinder is really neat.
- Buying a 386DX/33 PC with 6 or 8 Mb, VGA and a BIG HD. This would
  need to run MS-WINDOW 3.x (Yuck!), OS2/2.0 or linux/X-Windows/OpenLook.
  I hate messy-windows, because it is slow, crashes and consumes to much
  hd space in comparison with what it offers. OS2/2.0 seems nice, stable
  fast, modern, but it needs lots of Mb (internal and external).
  Linux however is a unix clone (I like unix), its free, it can run X-Windows
  and maybe I can get it to run the OpenLook user interface and apps.
  Linux with X consumes lots of hd space however.
- Buying a falcon with 4 meg and a 65 meg hd and a vga monitor.
  This looks great. With MultiTos it certainly offers what I'm looking for and
  a lot of nice extras and its not to expensive. Memory can still be
  expanded and I already have lots of software (partially self-made) that
  can be used on the falcon. However: it cannot and will never run
  unix (at least not for free) with X-Windows/OpenLook and I am not
  very confident in Atari at the moment. They might just make it, because]
  the falcon is a winning machine and a great MULTI-MEDIA machine, but
  they have to invest in advertisement and software for it.

So, I don't know yet. All have certain advantages and disadvantages.
Falcon really looks the best choice at the moment, but I'll have
to wait for atari really getting things going. If not I might just
be forced to buy myself a cheap and fast and memory spending PC with
linux, allthough I hate pcs more than I hate rainy days.

Well, just my 2 cents worth....
Bye, leon.
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