Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site yojna1.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!harvard!seismo!umcp-cs!aplcen!cp1!yojna1!wb6rqn From: wb6rqn@yojna1.UUCP (Brian Lloyd) Newsgroups: net.micro Subject: Re: Pournelle again Message-ID: <117@yojna1.UUCP> Date: Wed, 6-Nov-85 09:43:39 EST Article-I.D.: yojna1.117 Posted: Wed Nov 6 09:43:39 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 9-Nov-85 06:17:22 EST References: <338@ucsbcsl.UUCP> <85@birtch.UUCP> Organization: Yojna1 Amateur Radio Packet Unix System; Germantown, Md. Lines: 46 *** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MINDLESS DRIVEL *** This is in response to the article posted by Oleg Kiselev. I do not want to waste your time by repeating his article. I am not sure that you have fairly evaluated the 7300. I have used one for some time and I find that its performance is acceptable. First, you must have at least a megabyte of memory in the box, or the performance will suffer very badly. The reason for the apparent slow paging speed is that the disk swap partition resides with the root filesystem on the same, somewhat slow, disk. Every time you are forced to do a page swap, the disk must do a long seek. By adding more memory, you do not have to swap as often. This speeds up the system considerably. As for the speed of the mouse and the windowing software, solving the swapping speed problems will help greatly. Even if the windows are a bit slow, I enjoy being able to work in both the window and the shell environments. Having a multitasking OS that one can communicate with from the outside world, is a boon almost beyond price. Of the generally available personal computer products, including the IBM-PC family, the Apple family, and the CP/M world, I find the 7300 to be refreshingly different and usable. I agree with you that it is unfortunate that AT&T did not see fit to include the C compiler with with package, but it is understandable when you consider that AT&T's target market is that of the standard PC. I believe that it will shine as a UNIX programmers workstation and because of this, the lack of a bundled C compiler is shortsighted. You can still get the complete UNIX development environment, albeit at an additional cost. I just include the additional cost for the development software in price of the machine. Con- sidering the discounts that can be had on the 7300, it is still a "good deal" for someone wanting a personal UNIX development system. As for your comments on Jerry Pournelle, I feel that you are both correct and incorrect. You are correct in stating that Mr. Pournelle is egotistical and often uninformed. On that score he truely represents what he intends to represent -- the end user. I have to deal with egotistical uninformed users nearly every day. Jerry's columns help me to see thing from my customer's point of view. No, I do not perceive Jerry Pournelle as an expert, but then there are very few real experts in this world. Almost everyone who has ever written a line of code considers him/herself an "expert" programmer. 90% of these self-styled "experts" are sadly mistaken! Please, let us not have the pot calling the kettle black. Best Regards, Brian Lloyd ...![bellcore|cp1]!yojna1!wb6rqn