🚀 go-pugleaf

UC525655@mizzou1.missouri.edu (Mark Eaton) writes:

>In article <1992Oct27.012254.945@splunge.uucp>
>royce@splunge.uucp (Royce Howland) writes:
> 
>>
>>In article <1cf2arINNpiq@agate.berkeley.edu> william@moica.berkeley.edu (William E. Grosso) writes:
>>>Mitch Alland writes
>>>>
>>>> Since July, I've seen little written about the NeXT...
>>>
>>
>>[...Byte putting a stripped NeXT against stacked competition...]
>>
>Did I miss something or did BYTE make it sound like the vendors got to submit
>the machine used in the test. They mades several references to this. One was
>something like 'Commodore declined participation, citing the Amiga's
>multimedia orientation' etc. They even said that the machine they got had
>an inadequate HD, and they had to provide an extra one.
>This one might not be BTE's fault...

Yes, I remember that line.  I hope NeXT didn't submit such an under-
powered machine to Byte for the test; how could it fail to look bad
against competition like an RS/6000 with 32MB of memory?

But even if they did, since Byte replaced the hard drive, why couldn't
they have added some more memory, too?  What's the point of comparing
such disparate setups and then concluding that the RS/6000 is faster
for CAD and the 12MB Quadra is faster for FrameMaker?  It wouldn't
have taken much extra hardware to boost NeXT's rating; I'm using
FrameMaker on a 16MB turbo slab at work right now, with all document
and program access going over a network, and it's quite peppy.

The NeXT part of the writeup seemed to emphasize price.  (Note that in
the side bar summing up machine statistics, the NeXT's price and specs
are listed for a 105MB slab, which the authors justified with the odd
reasoning that if they had quoted a price for a 400MB 25MHz slab, it
would have been nearly as much as a 400MB 33MHz slab; yeah, so what?)
The other machines were definitely not configured for economy.

Byte also criticized the monochrome monitor when used for image
processing.  Well, who is going to choose a 2-bit mono display for
image processing when they could get color instead?  The other boxes
all had 8-bit or higher, many of them color.  I have to think NeXT
would have provided a color machine if asked, or if they knew the
nature of the writeup.

I like seeing good press on my favorite things.  More than that, though,
I like to see fair press...
-- 
Royce Howland, DKW Systems Corp.   |  "And since OS/2 2.0 is a 32-bit
       Everything is IMHO          |   operating system, programs are easier
royce@splunge.uucp  (NeXTMail OK)  |   to write and run faster, too."
or kakwa!atlantis!splunge!royce    |  ad for OS/2 2.0