Why keep suffering?

[Cymric]

Most of todays audio cds are horrible compressed, which usually is not the case with the LP releases. Nice example is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ&mode=related&search=
Though you cannot really hear the true quality difference in this clip, since youtube audio is of very low bitrate.

The way I understand it is that this is because compressed tunes sell rather better than uncompressed ones. It is not a problem of the medium; it is a problem of targetted marketing. Since LPs are manufactured in such small numbers nowadays, you can afford a gray beard who still knows how to make a recording which sounds good, and not just a recording the suits think sounds good. But this is all a bit off topic.

[matthey]

The people suffering are using Micro$oft products.

My Amiga 3000T has a 68060 and Voodoo 4 graphics card making it a pretty snappy system. It is fast enough for 90% of what people do with their computers. Software is cheap or free and some of it is very good. I just bought Pagestream 4.1 for less than $30 shipped off e-bay today for example. The Amiga does lack a good web browser or it would be used the most at home instead of my Winblows laptop which I have networked with my Amiga using SMB. The laptop is 3.2 GHz and slows down and has to be defragged about once a month and I don't even install much software on it. Plus it is always trying to do things I don't want it to. It does run some software that only runs on Windows like my software for editing the settings in my '93 Mazda RX-7 ECU (computer), another hobby of mine. The RX-7 engine has no pistons and is really small (80 ci = 1.3 liters) and people make fun of it and say it's outdated technology and unreliable which in a lot of ways it is but I have beaten a 454 ci Chevell SS and a couple of smaller displacement crotch rockets from a roll in it. The handling and breaks are amazing and the 7 is the funnest car I've ever driven. After driving the 7, I wasn't impressed by my uncles Porsche 996 (basically a newer 911) which I drove. It felt stiff and heavy even though it's about as fast, handles well, and has much bigger breaks (but longer stopping distance) compared to my 7. The Amiga is the same way. It's really good at some things when most just look for the most speed. I will buy the newer PPC Amigas with AmigaOS 4 if they ever come out and I'll use my classic Amiga for some things too. Whatever tool is best for the job and fun to use will be my tool of choice.

[Damion]

matthey wrote:
The people suffering are using Micro$oft products.

My Amiga 3000T has a 68060 and Voodoo 4 graphics card making it a pretty snappy system. It is fast enough for 90% of what people do with their computers. Software is cheap or free and some of it is very good. I just bought Pagestream 4.1 for less than $30 shipped off e-bay today for example. The Amiga does lack a good web browser or it would be used the most at home instead of my Winblows laptop which I have networked with my Amiga using SMB. The laptop is 3.2 GHz and slows down and has to be defragged about once a month and I don't even install much software on it. Plus it is always trying to do things I don't want it to. It does run some software that only runs on Windows like my software for editing the settings in my '93 Mazda RX-7 ECU (computer), another hobby of mine. The RX-7 engine has no pistons and is really small (80 ci = 1.3 liters) and people make fun of it and say it's outdated technology and unreliable which in a lot of ways it is but I have beaten a 454 ci Chevell SS and a couple of smaller displacement crotch rockets from a roll in it. The handling and breaks are amazing and the 7 is the funnest car I've ever driven. After driving the 7, I wasn't impressed by my uncles Porsche 996 (basically a newer 911) which I drove. It felt stiff and heavy even though it's about as fast, handles well, and has much bigger breaks (but longer stopping distance) compared to my 7. The Amiga is the same way. It's really good at some things when most just look for the most speed. I will buy the newer PPC Amigas with AmigaOS 4 if they ever come out and I'll use my classic Amiga for some things too. Whatever tool is best for the job and fun to use will be my tool of choice.

I'll agree the RX7 was an amazing car in its day (and still a great ride), but the slowest 996 is still 1 second quicker to 60, and likewise will stop some 20-30 feet sooner, also from 60. This is of course assuming both cars in excellent stock condition (naturally aspirated 996). They're close enough though, that in a "real world" contest I think it would mostly be a matter of the better driver. (Actually, it's pretty amazing that a 1993 Japanese car can hold a candle to a modern Porsche.)

The wankel engine is definitely a fantastic design. Back in the 70s, Mercedes developed a special test vehicle utilizing the wankel (and later, quite interestingly a 5-cyl turbodiesel), which set a bunch of world records, many of which still stand IIRC.

/off topic

[matthey]

@-D-

The stock RX-7 could stop from 60 mph in 110 feet!...

http://www.fd3s.net/magazine_articles/motor_trend_article01.html

and the stock pads were not very agressive. Knock off 100 lbs of weight (as I have) and add more aggressive pads and you better have your seatbelt fastened. The 996 I drove was a 4 wheel drive Turbo with Tiptronic transmission and I found the boost to be laggy and the transmission slow. Rotary's on the other hand produce tons of hot exhaust that directly hits the turbos without going through a valve train. They are made for Turbo's and produce near instantaneous boost in stock form. My 7 with just bolt-ons ran 12.8 in the 1/4 while very rich and untuned at the time.   The 996 might even beat me 0-60 with the 4WD but RX-7's launch pretty well too. Yea, stock for stock the Porshe would win but it's not really in the same class (price range) as the RX-7 and the newer technology got better. Same with the newer Corvettes performing better but my RX-7 is funner to drive than both and can hang with them pretty well. I have modernized my 7 to neutralize some of their advantage and made the car even funner. Some have removed the rotary engine from the 7 and put in a V8 which has some advantages but it's just not the same without the heart and soul of the car. I would rather tweak the interesting and unique stuff and see what it's capable of even if it's not the biggest, fastest or the best. The same goes with the Amiga. See, I even brought it back on topic :-D.

[rockape]

Hi,

Suffering ? me ?  why ?

I enjoy every minute of "fun" with my Amigas.

I'm not the sort of bloke who "HAS" to keep up with the Joneses either, I dont own a PC (IBM Compatable) and my Amigas do it all for me.

Kind Regards, Michael

aka rockape

Founder member of http://WWW.lincsamiga.org.uk

[coldfish]

Not too many people here use a stock Amiga as their sole computer.

Most have Win-PCs, Macs, Linux boxen -and- heavily expanded Amigas.

So, no one seems to be "suffering".

Personally, I like computer tech' in general so I have/had all of the above.  The only people suffering are those who dislike their computer and refuse to try anything different.

[Munchkin]

I fought until early 2002. Used my A4kD as my sole computer up till then. Got a new job where I had to keep up so I got my first ever amd powered windows/linux machine.

My A4kD still runs 24/7 though. I use it for a few different things, one is as IRC-server. I think it has an uptime of about 5 months in average, a lot more than the windows machine I use as webserver and for my skype phone, have to restart that about once a month.

Got three computers running 24/7 here and whenever I get into the hallway and hear the humming of the psu fan of the 4k it makes me warm somehow. I still have the original WB installation that I installed back in 1992 when I got it. It's just been updated and moved to a new harddrive since then.

[TiredOLife]

Only have an Amiga myself.
There is a windows machine in the house that belongs to the missus.
Very rarely have to use that.
Browsing isn't as bad as people make out although I would like to see a more upto date browser.
The only thing I really miss us the ability to see youtube clips.
There is Mplayer for 4.0 but am only running 3.9 at the min.
To be honest, the only time I do suffer is when I do have to use the windows machine.
Wait forever for the thing to boot up and then wait again whilst the thing shuts itself down.
Pain in the backside just to watch a 2 min clip on youtube.

[Waccoon]

@Tomas

That's not how CDs were originally made back in the 80's (Telarc CDs were incredible for their "punch").  When I play my old CDs, they seem very quiet compared to modern CDs.  Today, CDs are all normalized to fill the gamut.

Similar problems exists with color management.  NOBODY understands how to do color management properly, and I mean nobody.  Why is it when I tell my printer that a color is #C3C3C3, it prints green?  Doesn't it know that when you have equal parts of red, green, and blue, you should get gray?  Stupid forced color mapping!

This is all bad mastering, not the fault of the technology.

A lot of craftsmanship "suffers" over the years because they forget the old fashioned way of doing things, and more importantly, WHY they were done that way in the first place.

Hell, have you ever seen a PC game that throttles its framerate to sync with the monitor?  Even some console games are out of sync these days.  Don't these developers know that drawing graphics too fast actually makes things look worse?!

New hardware or old hardware is not going to solve this.  People just need to be aware of the problems to fix them.  The reason why I insist on running Amiga software strictly on modern hardware is because the hardware is not the problem.  Insisting on custom hardware is not going to do anything.

It's suffering, all right.

TiredOLife:  "To be honest, the only time I do suffer is when I do have to use the windows machine.
Wait forever for the thing to boot up and then wait again whilst the thing shuts itself down."

Get rid of your OEM Windows and get a retail copy.  My XP machine boots in 18 seconds, with Apache and MySQL in the background.  It does take a whopping 5 seconds to shut down, though.

[downix]

Waccoon wrote:

TiredOLife:  "To be honest, the only time I do suffer is when I do have to use the windows machine.
Wait forever for the thing to boot up and then wait again whilst the thing shuts itself down."

Get rid of your OEM Windows and get a retail copy.  My XP machine boots in 18 seconds, with Apache and MySQL in the background.  It does take a whopping 5 seconds to shut down, though.

I have a retail box of XP, takes 4 minutes 12 seconds to go from power-on to usability, and can take from 45 minutes to 5 hours to shutdown.  Yes, 5 hours.

And it's not even 4 months old an install.

[TiredOLife]

@Waccoon

Wasn't aware the OEM version was slower than the full version to boot up and shut down.
Why is that?
Cheers

[downix]

TiredOLife wrote:
@Waccoon

Wasn't aware the OEM version was slower than the full version to boot up and shut down.
Why is that?
Cheers

OEM's like packaging up a ton of junk that you cannot remove.  It's like buying a car from a dealer that adds a $200 "pinstriping" charge.

[LoadWB]

downix wrote:

OEM's like packaging up a ton of junk that you cannot remove.  It's like buying a car from a dealer that adds a $200 "pinstriping" charge.

That's only relevant if you use the factory load.  The first thing I do when I get a Dell is reload using the OEM disk, everything's spit-spot.

But there are a number of factors which affect Windows XP performance, one big one which most people tend to overlook: quick versus full NTFS format.  A full format takes longer during the installation, but you will see a massive performance benefit.  Then there's the speed of the drive interface, memory (256MB is BARE MINIMUM for XP as of SP2 if you want any semblance of performance,) and so on.


As for Amigas, the only suffering which I experience is the inability to purchase or register some software packages (Miami, in particular.)  Other than that, I love my machines.  My exgf reminds me that when we started dating in 2000, the only PC in my apartment was only ever used to run the specialized Windows-based billing software used by the ISP I worked for.  Everything else I did on my Amiga 4000.  It wasn't until 2001 when I actually purchased my first full-fledged Windows machine, a laptop.

If it weren't for the work I do, I could easily go to being all Amiga on the home-front.  Even if I had a job in a PC world, I could either not work at home, or use a company laptop to do a few things at home as necessary.

Now, web browsing does make things a little more difficult.  I'm pretty sure that my bank's on-line system won't work with Amiga, but I've never tried :-)  Might need a PC for that.  But then, it doesn't necessarily have to be Windows: my Solaris 8 workstation with Firefox handles this aspect quite well.

Anyway, far from suffering, I find that my interest in all of my "classic" or "retro" or flat-out obsolete computers is enlightening.  While the machines themselves may be obsolete, the thought and spirit behind them is certainly not.  I believe that I have a good grasp on various technologies, and am well-rounded enough to not be dragged into fanboydom.  I am also going to enjoy getting into hardware hacking on the Amiga, just as much as I did on the TI and the C64.  I'm looking forward to being able to spend some time converting my TI BASIC programs into machine language, C64 programs to C128, and learning programming on the Amiga.  I'm also hoping to expand into the ST and Atari 8-bit a little.  I know there are more systems out there.  A friend drolls on about programming the Z80 CPU, which I've never done, only TMS-9900 and 6502, so that would be interesting as well.

Why?  Pursuit of knowledge, perhaps?  Personal satisfaction?  Mental masturbation?  What does it matter so long as you're happy and productive in both the real and your own world?

A colleague asks me a few months ago about my interest in Solaris.  He says, does that make you any money?  Well, technically none of my customers use it, but it is a part of my own server infrastructure which is used by a number of customers.  In a way, yes, it does make me a little money.  But the knowledge of something other than Windows helps me to understand more about the technological world in which we live.  And besides, if one day I decide to ditch this self-employment gig, the state often advertises jobs involving experience with Solaris and Windows environments which pay $75k+.  So, yeah, it might make me money.

[downix]

LoadWB wrote:

downix wrote:

OEM's like packaging up a ton of junk that you cannot remove.  It's like buying a car from a dealer that adds a $200 "pinstriping" charge.

That's only relevant if you use the factory load.  The first thing I do when I get a Dell is reload using the OEM disk, everything's spit-spot.

The junk is on the OEM disk.  I have a Dell OEM, the install it gives includes such things as Dell remote diagnostic software.

[persia]

It's a collectors item, why do people by anything old?  Yeah, I can't do anything serious on the Amiga, but who cares?  Just load up a game or two and relax, it's a hobby.  Once you accept that Amiga isn't coming back as a serious contender you can just revel in the fun computer "antiquing."

The iMac puts food on the table (earns me a living), edits my pictures and video, the Amiga is really a "boys toy," something to play with in my spare time.  They (the Amiga and the Mac) serve different needs live together quite happily...

[LoadWB]

downix wrote:

The junk is on the OEM disk.  I have a Dell OEM, the install it gives includes such things as Dell remote diagnostic software.

You sure that's not still on the hard drive?  At this point I've done hundreds (literally *sigh*) of Dell OEM reloads and have never seen the Dell Diagnostic software installed from the CD.  At least, not as of SP1a; I haven't reinstalled Dell OEM prior to that release.