🚀 go-pugleaf

peter@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (Peter da Silva) writes:

>In article <3s1f7t$fjd@inferno.mpx.com.au>,

>His fucked up decisions have cost the computer industry billions, and have
>shipped billions more overseas to buy the RAM needed to run his bloated
>software. That's where he's got his money, from selling out you and me. 

Yes, his decisions cost lots of money. But it always were the
dicisions to do things the easy way and not the right way. The
decision to stay with 8086 memory addressing lead to the memory
problems with DOS. This is, why there still is a A20 Gate on the
newest and hottest pentium boards. And please remember, windows was
the first OS, that was able to really handle more RAM than 640
KBytes. So, I find it quiet natural, that shortly after supporting
more RAM, there is a demand for more RAM. MAC users had much more
memory tham PC users, long before windows. The reason simply is the
fact, that their OS supported more memory.

The decision NOT to put in a graphic device driver lead to the maximum
RAM at 640 KByte, and not at e.g. 900 KByte. It made every program to
include its own graphic drivers and lead to thousands of unhappy
computer users, not having the right driver for their graphic card and
their software. These driver problems were the reason, that the monitor
industry invented their multisync monitors. The graphic cards swiched
between differend emulations almost every time, when starting a
program. I never saw this on a Macintosh or a Sun Sparstation. They run
the same "video mode" from power on till power down.

>There's absolutely nothing in NT to justify the memory requirements. The copy
>I installed last week listed a 32M *minimum*. And damn, it's a frustrating
>system to work with... that hourglass gets real boring real fast.

Don't blame them for fixing some bad design decisions. Including the
graphic, mouse and the printer driver into windows was a good
thing. Introducing a new memory addressing scheme also is
usefull. There also has been a large demand for a standardisation of
the user interface. This also is a good decision. Add OLE,
multitasking, audio support, ...

But they did lots of mistakes, when switching to windows. Now, with
windows NT, they started working on these mistakes. A 32 Bit address
space was introduced, a new process modell, and access restrictions
were added. The lack of these features was one of the strongest
arguments against windows. These features made UNIX so robust, and
their lack is the reason, that every PC user knows about CTRL-ALT-DEL
and the reset button. So, don't blame them, for enhancing their
OS.

Well, one again, it seems, the result is not perfect. But UNIX had
over 20 years to achieve its robustness and functionality. And it
still has no build in GUI. Don't count X, it can't be compared to
Windows of the Mac OS. It works totally different, and the
disadvantages are clearly visable. I know, there are lots of advantages
too, but they can't cover the disadvantages, and the UNIX folks really
have to work on it.

Take a look at the apple Macintosh community. There were drastic
changes in the Macintosh OS. Every programmer was forced to work on his
programs, almost on every major system update. Sure, the old programs
continued to work, but the demand for the new features was so strong,
no one could refuse to integrate these new features into his programs.

P.S. I don't wand to defend Microsoft, but I think, the things they do
to their OS should have been done already years ago. I think, the
problems of modern PC's have their roots in decisions, made over 8
years ago. When they would have introduced a new memory model, when
the 80286 computers were available, there would be no 640 KByte
problem.

When they had included drivers for the graphic boards and the
printers, when realizing, there is a huge market for different graphic
boards, there would be no driver problems.

And these decisions would have been made years before 80% of todays PC
users had first contact with this stuff. So they had no compatibility
problems,.. But with the way, things went, every PC user has to deal
with these problems, even today.

And it was the fear of users, not being able to use their computer the
way, they were used to do, that lead to these decisions.

73, Mario
--
Mario Klebsch, DG1AM, M.Klebsch@tu-bs.de		+49 531 / 391 - 7457
Institut fuer Robotik und Prozessinformatik der TU Braunschweig
Hamburger Strasse 267, 38114 Braunschweig, Germany