stopthegop: I don't see what is so "innovative" about selling, say, a 1.0Ghz chip one week and calling it things like "breakthrough", "cutting edge", "all new", "totally redesigned", etc.. then the following week introducing the same exact chip, only with a slighly higher voltage applied to its master clock ocillator and a few pin re-assignments to make it incompatible with all previous versions, and describe it in those exact same terms.
No two cores are the same as they are largely built with logic compilers. That's why even different revisions of a game console have some compatibility problems. Also, core architecture is irrelevant, so long as the intructions are processed the same way. Instruction decoders are pretty complicated these days.
If it's so easy to make a CPU core that blows away what Intel et al are making, why can't anybody do it without overclocking it to the point where it explodes? If x86 is so terrible, you'd expect PPC to be running circles around it. Instead, even the most hardcore PPC fanatics are turning to x86.
I must say, though, that the retirement of NetBurst was
way overdue. It's nice to know at least AMD knows how to do x86 well.
stopthegop: I grew up in Missouri. We had a term for it. Its called inbreading.
Is that how they make that flat bread they give you in church?
stopthegop: So where's my choice now? If it looks like a PC and runs the same software as a PC and uses exactly the same hardware as a PC, then... Its a PC! If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck....
Figure out where to dig up a few dozen million dollars and you can build your own shiny new computer. Just a heads up: you wouldn't be the first to try.
stopthegop: My first Amiga was a 500 in 1987 (maybe it was '88?). After that an A4000. I had never even SEEN a crash until I got a PC.
Bulls**t. I've seen a
lot more crashes on my A1000 then I see today on my NT5 system. I see about one BSOD about every 3-6 months, and it's always my ATI or SoundBlaster driver that causes the problem. No OS is going to be stable if a kernel-mode program screws up.
Mac people used to tell me a million times that Macs don't crash, but every time they showed me their computers, it would crash at least once. "Well, that's just bad software."
Computers crash. All of them.
stopthegop: I know of numerous organizations that have Amiga computers in production to this day precisely because they do not crash.
That's because they're not using the OS to do anything. MS-DOS doesn't crash much, either, because it doesn't do very much.
Chrisdog: n all reality, I've never had any major Windows issues since the Windows 95 days. Yeah, Microsoft is the big monopoly, but they eventually made it easy as far as the simplicity of setting up a PC, loading drivers, and installing applications. I've taken a few wacks at Linux, and find it to be terribly confusing with all its dependencies when trying to get something installed. In my opinion, Linux is only popular because it is free.
My feelings exactly. Linux fanatics huff and puff about techical supiriority, but they don't really care too much about user interfaces, and if they do, they just clone what MS is doing. Installing drivers on Linux is always a pain. It's easier for me to just run all my UN*X software on Windows. Windows does a fine job handling all the low-level hardware issues I don't care about.
My major beef with Windows is the lack of standard tools. Again, though, UN*X tools on Windows helps ease the pain.
If anyone wants to know what's so great about UNIX, they should read about regular expressions. If someone were to make a good, "poor man's" regex engine, "Automator" on the Macintosh would be osbolete overnight. It shocks me that it took so long just to come up with that piece of bloat, and of course, it just had to be Apple. :-x
Chrisdog: In the past, I've also dealt with BeOS and IBM OS/2. Both were excellent operating systems, but due to a lack of consumer support, both have virtually disappeared, just like the AmigaOS.
Be was a good OS, but it wasn't much else. OS/2 was a real piece of work, and I liked it back when I used it, but once I became familiar with UNIX, OS/2 really looked stupid. In fact, most "old" OSes looked stupid. A good UNIX system with a new shell and an Amiga-like GUI would be really sweet.
Chrisdog: If anything is to blame for the lack of variety, it's the stupidity of the end user who buys into the monopoly with the reasoning that everyone else is doing it, so it must be good.
I really, really hate all those iPod people. People think it's some kind of miraculous revolution, but...
it's just a freakin' music player!yak: The AmigaOS itself is quite bug-free and doesn't hang. Maybe if someones uses just the OS and some perfectly working software written by himself (Nasa?) then Amiga is stable.
Note that early versions of AmigaOS were very unstable. As an A1000 owner, I know! Like Windows, some versions are much better than others.
stopthegop: When I got my first A4, as I said earlier, I started doing more. Naturally, I met the guru. But it was almost always my own fault.
How so?
adz: Anyway, if your Windows box is crashing, something isn't configured right.
Why bother tracking down the problem if you can blame Windows, instead? Got a virus? No problem! It's the fault of Windows for automatically installing Kazaa for you, along with 15 other "web browser enhancements" downloaded from free websites from GodKnowsWhere.
I've been using Windows for 10+ years. I've never had once instance of malware of any kind. Does Windows get the credit for that, too? Not on an Amiga forum, for sure. ;-)
For the record, I think Windows is pretty reliable and functional. I just think think that too often, I have to take the long way around to solve a problem, so I'd like to use something else. Oh yeah, and programming Windows sucks. :roll:
Mr A500: It's funny you should say that. I have a 1989 Macworld magazine that says "...when you honestly look at it, the Macintosh was the last major advance in the microcomputer industry. The Amiga and the Atari ST were Mac mutants".
How typical. The Mac was a cheap piece of junk, running an OS too big for the system to handle. The Amiga, with "too much hardware", was at least usable.
I have a Mac mini today, and I really can't use it, as the dock drives me nuts, and mouse acceleration is on by defaut, which I absolutely despise. It was also rediculously slow until I put more memory in it. If I didn't need it for software testing, I'd sell it. I always hated the old Macs, and even now that they're based on UNIX, I still hate them.
Mr A500: Unfortunately, all large companies are reeking blobs of self-interested power (the larger the blob, the more they reek).
I've been involved with a lot of open source projects, and seen some pretty unreasonable people. The commitment of the developers is what matters. If a company is too large, the developers lose focus.
No, the Amiga is NOT a PC. It seems that these days people think that every microcomputer is a PC.
Chill, dude. :-) The terms "PC", "microcomputer", "minicomputer", "workstation", and all the like, are pretty much just marketting buzzwords.
Look, guys, have you seen my new Macro Computer? It's officially a Dumb Terminal (ie, "NON-DOS BOX") because all my e-mail is stored on an Internet server, rather than a Hard Disk(TM)! Oh yeah, and by Hard Disk, I mean the metal ones with all the platters in them, not those
other hard disks, the thin ones in the plastic shells with the sliding metal door. The last time I used a Floppy Disk(TM, Pat. Pend.) was on my C64!
