🚀 go-pugleaf

*** Irving Hofman ** writes
> PC-Magazine recently compared the speed of a 486/50,
> Sun, Next, Mac, etc and found that the 486/50 was the
> fastest of the lot. They conducted benchtests by timing
> certain processor intensive operations in
> wordprocessors, spreadsheets, and desktop publishing
> using the same programs on all platforms. It is quite
> interesting reading.... 
> 
But at least in regard to the one comparison I was able to replicate  
myself (scrolling WP on 486 vs NeXT) quite unreliable.  The 486/50  
was in fact quite fast at scrolling WordPerfect, but no more so than  
the NeXT (non-turbo).  Bearing in mind that the 486 was scrolling WP  
(DOS version) in text mode (ie without showing actual text formatting  
other than by color changes, and without displaying embedded  
graphics) while the NeXT was scrolling fully-formatted text (font +  
size changes) _and_ the embedded graphics, I was more impressed with  
the NeXT.  
Two caveats: 1. in both cases the initial run through the document  
was in fact faster on the 486; once the entire document was in RAM,  
there was no difference in scrolling speed.  2. for a fair test, you  
need to use the scroll bar in the NeXT WP version; using the  
line-at-a-time scroll arrows is very slow, about as slow as scrolling  
by repeatedly hitting the down cursor key on the 486 rather than  
holding it down.
I couldn't judge how fair or accurate the tests of other programs and  
other platforms were, for lack of direct experience or boxes to try  
it on.
--
-
Stefano Pagiola
Food Research Institute, Stanford University
spagiola@leland.stanford.edu (NeXTMail encouraged)