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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