Re: Ridin' Through Gateway Country, Roundin' up details....

["Robert G. Brown" <bob@xxxxxxx>]

>>>That's about the going rate on auctions at www.ebay.com and the like....
>> What do you expect? It'e a commodity market, so all the spreads are gone.
>Hey, this is a Good Thing. At least, for us end users.

>>>My experience with 95 confirmed most (but not all) of my
>>>negative expectations regarding it, but as I said was more pleasant than I
>>>had been hoping, overall....
>>Um... merely the rack, but not the Iron Maiden?
>...not as great as OS/2 which I've been using at this point for years, but
>it's okay as long as you don't think of it as anything more than what it is 
>-- MS-DOS 7.0 and Windows 4.0." 
With the volume of data a lot of people are handling today, and with todays 
hardware, a description like that means that it just doesn't cut it for A LOT
of apps. The market is telling me this; lots of clients have done evals of
'95, and they've moved on to something else, NT or one of the Unices.

>It's been at least as reliable for me as DOS has ever been, if not more, 
>and I actually enjoy using it enough that I'll always have at least one box
>running it.
I'm pleased that SOMEONE has a stable install of Win95; this is one of the 
cases I've heard of. Have you ever had to solve a problem by reinstalling or
doing extensive recovery work?

>...thrashing it, doing "weird" things... compiling
Wait a minute... compiling is "weird?". If I can't compile something on a 
box, it's actually useless to me (usually). I mean, Microsoft makes compilers
and IDE's (a couple of which I use in NT and elsewhere), so why's it wierd?

> running non-standard TCP/IP applications like the RC5 distributed client...
Why is this "weird"?, and what "non-standard" about the RC5 client. It's either
a compliant TCP/IP app or it isn't. Please explain.

>logging in and out of different profiles....
Look, I don't know what you think is "normal", but I do know that verything
you've mentioned here is completely within the boundaries of normal system
admin and operation. If there's any question that an OS can't or doesn't
handle these things fairly well, it's a real problem.

There's no need to stop because this is a Linux list. As I said before, if
we don't eval the competition, we may find ourselves unable to compete in
an MS dominated world. Advocating something we think is better means that
we'll have to know how the products we're supporting stack up against the
competition.

>Your points regarding NT are valid to an extent, although again it hasn't
>behaved as badly... But I wouldn't use a butter knife to cut steak, either.
I tend to have more or less steaklike problems to solve, most of the time.
In fact, the steak frequently comes to me burnt to a crisp, so it's REALLY
tough! :) Butter knives are (almost) useless to me.

Let's look at price-performance. I paid over $1.5K for the NT software I 
have, and there's a goodly amount of stuff I need to do that I just cannot 
accomplish under NT. Add to that over $4K of time (so far), to get it config-
ured and keep it running. Professionally, I've spent about $2.5K in time to
keep Linux running, but only about $60.00 for the software. The only thing I
cannot do in Linux is test and compile for NT!

For me, Linux represent FAR better price-performance. I can do EVERYTHING I
need in order to support a lot of work, and it's A LOT less expensive than
NT. If THe cost (to me) of RH Linux went from $50.00 to $1500.00, I wouldn't
care; the distribution is still a better value.

>>>Oh, I argue it just as much for the principle as the practical....
>>Buy the smallest computing increment you'll use until your needs change
>>radically. Include a margin for planning if you're advanced enough. Forget
>>the bleeding edge unless you REALLY need it.  If you think you really need
>>it, you're probably wrong.
>And of course, this flies out the window when I'm flipping through the
>latest Computer Shopper. ...
Any trade mag is going to tout the latest and greatest, the fastest and the 
snazziest stuff. Look how we sell cars in this country.  I think nowhere is
the gap wider than the the PEECEE bizniz.  Lots of people who need something 
like a Corolla buy Jaguars, but in the PC biz, lots of people are buying 
something along the lines of a midrange attack bomber when what they really 
wanted was something like a tricycle.

>I have no quarrel with someone spending more than they need to, as long as
>they get what they want -- AND, if they know how much "extra" they're paying
>that they really don't need to. 
Hey, it's your money, right? If you want to throw some of it away, who am I to
stop you? Nobody, and I've never prevented someone from buying anything like
that. What I have done is present what I know about the business and attempted
to inform people BEFORE they buy. About 98% of the time, people opt not to 
spend more than they clearly see need to.

>... we'll donate one to KLUG. I've got enough other things on the burner
>that I don't want to commit to any real deadline, but I would like to (and
>will try to) get it to you by the end of July.
GREAT! Whenever's fine; if you don't have a monitor to go with, we can fake it.
The more additional info you can supply with the machine (memory, video, etc.)
at donation time, the better.

>>>Anyone know anything more about DEC's acquisition by Alpha? 
>>Eh?
>Pardon my buttery fingers. I meant to say, DEC's acquisition by Compaq. Is
>this rumor or fact?
Fact. Done deal.

>>>I was surprised to learn the Alpha was still going at all after the big to-do
>>>with Intel some time ago.
>>Eh?

>My memory on this is even more hazy -- Intel sued DEC, or DEC sued Intel,
>one of the two, over something to do with the Alpha? 
If you follow every lawsuit in this industry, you won't need a life. The stakes
are so high it's easy to keep a few lawyers around, and if they win something
in court you've forced a competitor off their game, which is irritating at the
very least.

                                                              Ciao!
                                                              ---> RGB <---