Personal Computers running UNIX - (nf)

[west at sdcsla.UUCP]

In response to Perry Smith [of "smu", whatever that may be]:

> We have four suns holding the floor down here at smu.  I find them
> to be less than usefull.  Any high performance computer that does
> screen scrolling in software is stupid.  That is just the beginning
> of the problems with the suns.  Their philosophy seems to be
> "Fix it with software" which is o.k. unless you want to get finish
> today instead of next week.  I cast one definate NO vote for the suns.
> (These are sun 2's with the new software and all.  Before the "upgrade"
> they were absured.)

Really?   Sun-2's less than useful?    We have several here
in the Cognitive Science Lab, and I don't think there is anyone
who finds them less than useful.   Windows are generally well-done
and quick, and the response is usually fine.   We use them for
software development, [real-time] typing tests, word processing & text
formatting, message delivery, modelling (and associated interactive
graphics), heating up the room and so on....

Of course, you need 2 Megs or more of "core", and 16 Megs of
swap space (which is not well utilized), but once you have that,
and hopefully an Ethernet, I really can't imagine why you exhibit
such disdain for Suns.

Of course they fix some things with software -- do you really expect
companies to replace an entire board (in hundreds of installations)
when some minor bug crops up?   And what difference does it generally
make to you how the bug is fixed?

Similarly, how someone does their scrolling really doesn't matter
nearly as much as how well it is done.  Sun could have done better
on this, and I expect them to in a future release, but it really
doesn't bother me.   I don't tend to spend much time trying to
read and scroll at the same time on terminals which do this
quite nicely (though not many do at 9600 baud).

It would be useful for readers of such comparisons if you would
specify the use to which you put your machine(s), what you are
comparing them to [an ideal? a comparably-priced machine?], and
what in particular you find disappointing.  Simply stating that a
computer is less than useful merely indicates that you haven't
figured out how to use it.

	-- Larry West, UC San Diego, Institute for Cognitive Science
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