h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've been programming for about 20 years, 15 professionally. It is difficult to think of a time when some SIG of Macs, Amigas or whatever try to show haw their pet machine is better than a PC and how it should take over the world.

Well here is a lesson in business reality for you:

1. I'm not going to buy machines from a monopoly supplier. All parts of a PC can be supplied from several suppliers.

2. Computer technology of similar price goes at about the same speed.

3. There are several operating systems for the PC, Microsoft is a very convenient one.

4. Having used Macs, PCs and various other lesser known devices, all computers crash.

5. The term PC as in IBM PC refers to an arrangement of items that can range from a hand held device to a 32 way server cluster. Why should I retrain my PC techs on several different technologies?

6. It is interesting to note that when software is initially transfered from a lesser platform to the PC it generally needs a year or so to get its act together, before it is serious competition.

With introduction of browser based applications niche machines may make a resurgence. But who cares...

You don't buy machines from a monopoly suplier, yet you're happy to do this with the OS?

So all PC OS's come from M/soft?

Someone had better tell Linus, I don't think he knows he's working for Bill

;^)#

The implication in the statement that Microsoft OS' are convienient is that the first poster would rather get the OS from this monopolist source rather than somewhere else. Shame really.

Also interesting to note the use of the term `lesser platform' as if all other computing amchines are inferior to the PC, yet the ports take about a year to get their act together. Perhaps this is an indication of how the programmers have to rewrite the code to accomodate the problems inherent in the design of the IBM compatible PC.

(Just to throw another stone in the water )

~watching the ripples~

"Currently-expected killer apps include Iron Dignity, a game that has been in development for the past four years" & "Programmer support is far better on the RISC OS platform - typically within a few hours of e-mailing a bug report to a developer a new version of the software will be released. Compare this with Microsoft, where development can take weeks or months."

Those Iron Dignity people must have been getting a hell of a lot of emails

;^)#
"RISC OS is, of course, immune to all PC viruses." ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
PC's are, of course, immune to all RISC OS viruses"

~watching the surf~

Regarding the Iron Dignity situation, it hasn't been released so we can't send them bug reports yet

Regarding PCs of similar value having similar speeds, um no. You are wrong. Apart from RISC OS's responsiveness (which has to be seen to be believed, unfortunately), it also dates rather slowly. Therefore my Acorn machine bought three years ago is as responsive as the dual processor machine I'm using now, and is still faster at vector graphics handling.

If I'd bought my windows PC three years ago, the memory, processors, hard discs and scsi controllers would have been at least three times the price of the Acorn, if they had been available.

Regarding the software conversion issue: a year? Ever heard of Sibelius? Xara?

In the end it's all a matter of taste. But until you've tasted something, how can you say it tastes like faeces?

There are at least 3 OS's for the PC not including DOS and including Windows only once. Windows, Linux, Beos. Get your facts right.

and that doesn't include server operating systems...

I said lesser KNOWN platforms. I am not judgmental as to the technology, scratch the surface and they are surprisingly similar.

Funny when I compare machines costing the same the PC generally comes out at more bang for your buck. A year or two back a magazine compared a PC and Mac costing the same. They were quite similar in performance, the PC actually came out on top. The greatest difference as I remember it was in preparing a Quicktime Movie, which the PC did twice as fast.
Hardware technology is basically the same in all machines at a given price point.

I was thinking of a particular example, Quark Express. This is the defacto standard for publishing and printing. When it was introduced on the PC it did very badly in comparatve reviews with other PC DTP packages even though it had the same feature set as the Mac version and was of comparable stability.

The current versions are very good.

As a side issue, my brother working as an editor in the publishing industry for about 25 years now, uses Quark... on a PC. Occasionally he has to use it on a Mac and hates it.

A second, interesting, example is Linux. I like Linux I think it is great, good support, stable, fast, lots of software but, until recently, difficult to install. This is changing now that it is starting to go head to head with Windows.

The competition in the PC software market drives standards up.

Oh no you didn't. That might well have been what you meant, but re-read your last point in the first posting and to quote
"from a lesser platform to the PC"

Personally I don't careall that much. I just want to get my job done using tools that work. If that means I sit down in fromt of one particular type of machine or another then so be it.

Oops I did say lesser platforms. I take it back.

Ah now if you had used that as an example, we wouldn't have had all this confusion would we It certainly has been the case where stuff has been migrated from Mac to WinXX that it initially is poor.

Linux is good, I use it at home. Competition in the PC software markets does drive standards up, but it also gives in to featuritis and bloated software. I'm still looking for something that'll give me the speed and power of WP5.1. That just concentrated on the writing part and a bit on layout, now I've got to get past some darn paperclip telling me that I'm writing a letter as if I hadn't worked that out before I started!

Fair enough, mistakes happen. Now I know what you meant then it all makes more sense (well as much as anything ever does which can descend into religeous war )

> Regarding the software conversion issue: a
> year? Ever heard of Sibelius? Xara?

I've heard of Xara. It took about 2 years, but it was a ground-up rewrite in a different programming language, and can in no way be considered to be a port of ArtWorks.

So I'm genuinely interested: what is your point?

Tim

Certainly Microsoft is not a monopoly supplier of operating systems, but it is a monopoly supplier of Windows. Just as Acorn was not a monopoly supplier of computers, just of Risc OS computers (which has now changed, of course!). If you don't want to get your products from a monopoly supplier, you have to choose an 'open architecture', such as Linux, don't you?

<< I've heard of Xara. It took about 2 years, but it was a ground-up rewrite in a different programming language, and can in no way be considered to be a port of ArtWorks.

So I'm genuinely interested: what is your point? >>

OK.
The point was about apps reaching 'maturity' (getting their acts together). Xara and Sibelius both appeared to be 'mature' products on their arrival on the PC market.

As to the conversion aspect, are there any Acorn applications that have been 'converted', as opposed to rewritten in a different language? Do I really care? Hmm. Not today

http://www.atheos.cx add that one to your list of X86 operating systems.

Mac OS is just revolting, there may be some hope for it though I'm quite impressed by hwat i've seen of the unix based OS X. for Mac users you have several versions of Linux available to you , BEOS 5 ppc
and your native Mac OS.

if you love DOS goto http://www.freedos.org