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HELP! Mac OSX vs. WinXP Multitasking Limits?!
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<blockquote data-quote="TekWiz" data-source="post: 211177"><p>Well, I used the Amiga between 1988 and 1995. There were a lot of cool games but I never really played any of them--I just enjoyed seeing all the graphics and demos. I mostly used it to dialup to BBSs, word processing for school, and also did some desktop publishing with PageStream with a Panasonic KXP-1124 24 pin dot matrix at first! and then a Laserjet III. PageStream was competing with Quark and Pagemaker at the time, and it did have many features that were not available in the others. The thing that really limited the Amiga in terms of productivity is that the standard non-interlaced video was only 640x200, which means you could see the scanlines. 640x400 came with a price--interlacing which hurt your eyes since it flickered like crazy unless you sat in the dark and turned the brightness down or had a high-persistence monitor. The colors were great--4,096 but this had to be in HAM (Hold And Modify) mode, which was a funky mode that only worked with some programs. Many things were also done in a shell mode which was like DOS.</p><p></p><p>The Mac had a much nicer display, even when it was B&W it was sharper and more elegant. It didn't have the animation abilities of the Amiga though. The Amigas were cheaper, with the Amiga 500 costing about $800 with a color monitor, but only a floppy drive. Like the Commodore 64, it was a cool computer at the time, but never as "serious" and "neat" as the Mac.</p><p></p><p>The great graphics chips were the cause of it's success at the time but also caused it's downfall--like someone once said they were "loose cannons". The software was so closely tied to the custom chipset, it was very hard to take advantage of newer display technology. The Amiga 3000 had a "FLICKER FIXER" which was a built-in de-interlacer. Most Amiga users didn't even have a true VGA monitor so the flicker fixer didn't do them any good. The results were also not the best. None of the larger software houses produced any of the mainstream software for it, probably due to the small user base.</p><p></p><p>With all these problems, the Amiga became big in video production, particularly with the Toaster and is still used for this purpose in some places.</p><p></p><p>The only reason I forgot about the Amiga in 1995 is because I wanted to be able to use all the mainstream software, and Windows was the most popular OS for which I could get the most software. I also liked the idea I could build my own PC, being an electronics addict. The Mac was also more expensive. But whenever I saw a Mac I was always jealous. It always looked so goooood!!! Even my mother who is not much into computers remembers a day we walked into this big Mac place on 23rd st. in NY and she was so impressed by the "beautiful blue, calm shade, look, and relaxing appearance of the Mac screens" She still insists that she isn't seeing anything as pretty on the PC screen today. I also feel something like that when I look at a Mac display. Somehow it's still years ahead. Just the screenshots put up here look so much better than clunky windows...</p><p></p><p>Hey, I am so dissapointed--that computing.net site removed the whole thread. Guess they didn't want an OS war. Sucks--It did get pretty funny--I think these WinXP loyalists got extremely angry because they knew what I was saying was true but won't admit it to themselves.</p><p></p><p>Why did Apple drop the old OS? Because they wanted to keep up with the times. They didn't want the user experience to be held back by old technology. Even OS9 was far beyond Windows but it wasn't good enough for Apple. OSX is based on rock stable FreeBSD and the whole OSX shell was written by only 150 programmers. Microsoft has thousands of programmers and they keep patching and messing with the same old code from DOS and Windows v1.0.</p><p></p><p>The result? A MULTITASKING OS that RUNS SLOW AS MOLASSES, NO MATTER how much RAM you have! You can put 4 gigs in Windows and it will still use a swap file, and you'll be waiting while the drive crunches away. Additionally you cannot run more than about 10 browser windows 10 explorer windows and a couple of major programs like photoshop before it stops working, or as I tested a maximum of 37 IE windows and 16 Windows explorer windows! That's really NOT MUCH for a freshly booted, clean install of WinXP! As I say this was not even a memory limitation--the computer didn't even increase the swap file size--this is a limit in WinXP's internal memory stack--supposedly claimed to be unlimited, but it's LIE!!!! Easily testable!!!</p><p></p><p>I will end this with a simple example: Someone I know bought 3 new Dells for his office just last month. All of them are 2.7 Ghz with 512 Mb RAM with WindowsXP Media Edition. The office manager is complaining why these things are so slow, and they are... Some of these Dells have programs crash as soon as you take them out of the box.</p><p></p><p>Another disaster: on friday I tried to install Adobe Reader 7 on a Windows PC that just recently had WinXP freshly installed on it--I couldn't--the installer (The Netopsystems FEAD Optimizer) crashes over and over again. I am trying to figure out why.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="TekWiz, post: 211177"] Well, I used the Amiga between 1988 and 1995. There were a lot of cool games but I never really played any of them--I just enjoyed seeing all the graphics and demos. I mostly used it to dialup to BBSs, word processing for school, and also did some desktop publishing with PageStream with a Panasonic KXP-1124 24 pin dot matrix at first! and then a Laserjet III. PageStream was competing with Quark and Pagemaker at the time, and it did have many features that were not available in the others. The thing that really limited the Amiga in terms of productivity is that the standard non-interlaced video was only 640x200, which means you could see the scanlines. 640x400 came with a price--interlacing which hurt your eyes since it flickered like crazy unless you sat in the dark and turned the brightness down or had a high-persistence monitor. The colors were great--4,096 but this had to be in HAM (Hold And Modify) mode, which was a funky mode that only worked with some programs. Many things were also done in a shell mode which was like DOS. The Mac had a much nicer display, even when it was B&W it was sharper and more elegant. It didn't have the animation abilities of the Amiga though. The Amigas were cheaper, with the Amiga 500 costing about $800 with a color monitor, but only a floppy drive. Like the Commodore 64, it was a cool computer at the time, but never as "serious" and "neat" as the Mac. The great graphics chips were the cause of it's success at the time but also caused it's downfall--like someone once said they were "loose cannons". The software was so closely tied to the custom chipset, it was very hard to take advantage of newer display technology. The Amiga 3000 had a "FLICKER FIXER" which was a built-in de-interlacer. Most Amiga users didn't even have a true VGA monitor so the flicker fixer didn't do them any good. The results were also not the best. None of the larger software houses produced any of the mainstream software for it, probably due to the small user base. With all these problems, the Amiga became big in video production, particularly with the Toaster and is still used for this purpose in some places. The only reason I forgot about the Amiga in 1995 is because I wanted to be able to use all the mainstream software, and Windows was the most popular OS for which I could get the most software. I also liked the idea I could build my own PC, being an electronics addict. The Mac was also more expensive. But whenever I saw a Mac I was always jealous. It always looked so goooood!!! Even my mother who is not much into computers remembers a day we walked into this big Mac place on 23rd st. in NY and she was so impressed by the "beautiful blue, calm shade, look, and relaxing appearance of the Mac screens" She still insists that she isn't seeing anything as pretty on the PC screen today. I also feel something like that when I look at a Mac display. Somehow it's still years ahead. Just the screenshots put up here look so much better than clunky windows... Hey, I am so dissapointed--that computing.net site removed the whole thread. Guess they didn't want an OS war. Sucks--It did get pretty funny--I think these WinXP loyalists got extremely angry because they knew what I was saying was true but won't admit it to themselves. Why did Apple drop the old OS? Because they wanted to keep up with the times. They didn't want the user experience to be held back by old technology. Even OS9 was far beyond Windows but it wasn't good enough for Apple. OSX is based on rock stable FreeBSD and the whole OSX shell was written by only 150 programmers. Microsoft has thousands of programmers and they keep patching and messing with the same old code from DOS and Windows v1.0. The result? A MULTITASKING OS that RUNS SLOW AS MOLASSES, NO MATTER how much RAM you have! You can put 4 gigs in Windows and it will still use a swap file, and you'll be waiting while the drive crunches away. Additionally you cannot run more than about 10 browser windows 10 explorer windows and a couple of major programs like photoshop before it stops working, or as I tested a maximum of 37 IE windows and 16 Windows explorer windows! That's really NOT MUCH for a freshly booted, clean install of WinXP! As I say this was not even a memory limitation--the computer didn't even increase the swap file size--this is a limit in WinXP's internal memory stack--supposedly claimed to be unlimited, but it's LIE!!!! Easily testable!!! I will end this with a simple example: Someone I know bought 3 new Dells for his office just last month. All of them are 2.7 Ghz with 512 Mb RAM with WindowsXP Media Edition. The office manager is complaining why these things are so slow, and they are... Some of these Dells have programs crash as soon as you take them out of the box. Another disaster: on friday I tried to install Adobe Reader 7 on a Windows PC that just recently had WinXP freshly installed on it--I couldn't--the installer (The Netopsystems FEAD Optimizer) crashes over and over again. I am trying to figure out why. [/QUOTE]
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HELP! Mac OSX vs. WinXP Multitasking Limits?!
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