🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug5.105000.1@woods.ulowell.edu> welchb@woods.ulowell.edu writes:
>In article <199208041534.AA02741@tuna.wang.com>, IMAGING.CLUB@OFFICE.WANG.COM ("Imaging Club") writes:
>> How in your opinion do DEC PCs match up against
>> Wang PCs, particularly the new ones, in quality
>> or features?
>> 
>This is not the type of answer you were looking for, but ...
>
>I hear that a prototype PC clone, using DEC's Alpha chip, outperforms
>a 386 (486?) by a factor of 5 or so.  This is talking about a PC 
>in the $7000 class.  [This is also scuttlebutt, n-th hand reporting,
>by an uninterested party who wasn't really listening when I heard it.]

There is a cloud over this statement:

a)	Is DEC's machine running an 80386 emulator, and they are claiming that
there is a 5:1 performance improvement over a 386 or 486 as a direct emulator
that is so good that it totally emulates literally everything about a 386/486
environment?  This troubles me because the demo includes windows, and that
would imply that they picked an arbitrary video interface to emulate.  Real
PC's can grow whatever screen they need from quite good and cheap to even
better and affordable.  This approach therefore stagnates utility and makes
a real PC a better choice as the video revolution keeps going.

b)	Is DEC's machine merely running a re-compiled Windows thingie?  In
which case, this is a meaningless comparison because all it means is that
the new user interface on this particular Alpha is fairly close to the new
user interface on a PC.  Not only are you captive to whatever DEC throws onto
the machine, but it's also totally incompatible with all other software.  When
someone releases a DOS or Windows application, it won't run here because the
machine ain't a 386.  Moreover, knowing DEC, there will be less support for
other vendor's video hardware than on a PC, and as we all know, the action
for the new video stuff is from third-parties.

I'll admit that DEC may get its act together and allow us a smattering of
some of the other new hardware out there such as disks, but never as many
as buying/building a real clone will allow.  In any case, DEC's never had
a reputation for letting other companies who specialize in one area do
what they do best on DEC's turf.  DEC just forces you to muddle through at
their level and at their price.  If they want to compete, they better unbundle
the product as much as they can and just be in the business of selling what
they actually make, and at enough of a component level that no one feels 
forced into buying a bad package to get a partial gain at the expense of a
partial loss.  DEC has to recognize that they will not be the best at literally
everything\.

cjl