Eli Brandt wrote:

> Michael Gogins wrote:
> > Currently, Windows workstations offer more price/performance at the low and
> > middle ends of the workstation market than do Unix workstations.
>
> I agree, if you're actually comparing commodity Intel boxes with
> proprietary workstation hardware.  Mass-market is going to win, despite
> all of the brain-dead baggage Intel carries.  I hope PPC survives, but
> binary compatibility is a strong pressure.
>
> Running both on Intel PCs, I'd say Unix and Windows have similar
> performance.  (Windows apps tend to be more bloated because they get
> upgraded more.)  Price is hard to measure, since Unix apps tend to be
> either expensive or free.  But I think Windows will win here not on
> performance/price but mostly for the usual positive-feedback reasons.
>
> > What I do personally is develop all my own stuff in Java. In theory, I
> > should be able to get it to work on any platform. I haven't yet tested this
> > theory (but I soon will be!).
>
> "Good luck... you'll need it."
>
> --
>      Eli Brandt  |  eli+@cs.cmu.edu  |  http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~eli/

  I here that IBM has a PPC chip in dev that runs the PPC instruction set as
well as the Intel set...

I dont know... I have been forced to use WinNT 4.0 for 4 months once... I just
dont get the whole NT frenzy... I saw more of the Blue screen than that GUI
(which is not that bad if dont have work to do) and waiting for long/painfull
reboots more than I would have liked to... since this is the OS that "is
replacing Unix" (give me a break).... fast? no! stable? no! compatible? no! lack
of drivers? yes! resource hog? yes! and of course that GUI.... By the time NT is
out of its perpetual beta level it will be unix... posix threads already being
implemented.... openGL(SGI and Mircosoft working on this one)... NT ports of
unix utilities have already been done.... So, Microsoft is just reinventing
something that already exists again!!! and Again!!!! I dont get it....

I see, atleast in the states, there is not a price gap between PPC Macs and PCs
(given similar hardware configs) anymore... so price/performance isnt a high
point on Intel anymore, given the poor fp performance of the Intel chip... some
of us need fast fp math still.... software availability (abundance) and gaming
is where the Wintel/Dos PeeCee wins.

Michael