Received: from FARADAY.ECE.CMU.EDU by K.CS.CMU.EDU; 12 Mar 87 10:06:53 EST Received: by faraday.ECE.CMU.EDU (4.12/4.7) id ; Thu, 12 Mar 87 09:59:29 est; Date: Thu, 12 Mar 87 09:59:29 est From: Edward Czeck Message-Id: <8703121459.AA16067@faraday.ECE.CMU.EDU> To: bovik@faraday.ECE.CMU.EDU Subject: Buying a PC Cc: rec48@eea, shr@eeo, wilken@eeo 02-Mar-87 11:33 Edward Czeck@faraday buying a PC I am buying a PC for my High School age sister. She is presently a Junior, and will by attending college is in 1988. What should I buy? Her present needs are mostly word processing, but will expand (i assume) when she enters school. What should I get in terms of the whole package? (including printers and Software?) I am presently looking the the MAC, but will consider recommendations for or against the MAC and others. Replies will be sent to Bovik. Thanks Ed Czeck ewc@faraday ---------- Replies to follow------------------------------------------- Date: 2 Mar 1987 11:38-EST From: Michael.Witbrock@f.gp.cs.cmu.edu To: Edward.Czeck@faraday.ECE.CMU.EDU Subject: Re: buying a PC On just about every grounds I can think of (except slightly lower amount of available software), the Amiga is the best PC that you can get. It runs considerably faster than a MAC, has a true multitasking OS, has high resolution colour graphics, mouse, better keyboard than the MAC (for wordprocessing). It has an 8Mb adressing range. There are 3 models avail. The amiga 500 comes with 1/2M memory, 880k diskdrive, and RGB, NTSC composite and NTSC modulated video. It doesn't come with a monitor. It is about 500$. The amiga 1000 is a standard amiga. It comes basically like the 500, but is more expandable, and has a detachable keyboard. It comes with a monitor. It can be got for about 900$ in NewYork. The amiga 2000 is more easily expandable. It has 8 slots inside, 2 of which can take IBM pc boards. You can plug an IBMPC clone processor into it (if you like to do such things - it runs in parallel through a window) You can also plug in a 68020 and 68081 FPP into it. In this case, it runs somewhat faster than a microvax. I think this model is about 1500 - 2000$ (it is very new). --- If this isn't of interest, apple are releasing a new mac in about 3weeks. From: Allan.Heydon@theory.cs.cmu.edu To: Edward.Czeck@faraday.ECE.CMU.EDU Subject: Re: buying a PC Ed, I own a Macintosh, and I would highly recommend it for your sister. My experience has been that the Mac is easy to learn and easy (even fun!) to use. By "easy to use" I mean that it is easy to get things done quickly, accurately, and with a minimal amount of frustration. If you don't think that your sister will be programming once she enters school, I would recommend that you purchase a 512e (this means the machine has the new 128K ROMS, 512K of RAM, and an 800K [double-sided] internal disk drive). If she may need more memory than that, then you can either buy a 512e and upgrade to 1 meg of memory, or buy a MacPlus (which is just like a 512e with 1 meg of memory, but also has a SCSI high-speed port for a hard disk drive connection). I would also highly recommend that you purchase an external disk drive (preferably double-sided so that she doesn't have both single- and double-sided disks to keep track of) because, although Aplle claims that the Mac was designed with only 1 disk drive in mind, I think most all Mac owners would agree that the amount of disk-swapping required with a single-drive system becomes awfully frustrating. I own an Imagewriter I printer, and am very satisfied with it. You will almost certainly want to buy your sister a printer unless she will have easy access to one at school. Apple no longer includes MacPaint or MacWrite as part of the sale of the machine itself. I find MacWrite to be adequate for most all of my word processing tasks, but it does have some limitations, and if your sister is going to be doing anything non-trivial, you may want to purchase a more sophisticated word-processing program. The reviews I've read seem to indicate that Microsoft Word (version *3.0*) is an amazing word-processor that can do just about anything. There is also a more sophisticated version of MacPaint called FullPaint (I've used it, and it is more powerful, but unfortunately I don't own it, so I don't know who it's marketed by). If your sister eventually decides to upgrade a Macintosh in any way, you might want to tell her to think twice before having the machine upgraded by a third party (i.e. by a company other than Apple). The reason I say this is not that the third-party upgrades are inferior. Rather, Apple repairs are not waranteed once a third-party has had their hands on you Mac. For example, my Mac was upgraded by a third party to a 512e. When my power-supply board broke, Apple replaced it, but the replacement board was not waranteed as it usually would be because of the non-standard mother board installed by the third party. This is just something you might want to consider. Hope this helps! - Allan (heydon@theory) From: David.Maynard@faraday To: Edward.Czeck@faraday Ed, One thing to consider is that some colleges have a "preferred" PC. For example, Virginia Tech is almost exclusively populated with IBM PC's. Other schools (such as Brown) have almost all Apple equipment. If she doesn't know where she wants to go, you might consider getting something fairly inexpensive until she does (just in case). Apple recently introduced the Macintosh II. It runs most Mac software but has an open architecture for add-on boards. It is also about twice as fast as a Mac+. If you do decide on the Mac, definitely get the fastest one that is affordable. That fancy user interface takes its toll on the processing power. I don't know about the pricing on the Mac II, but I would probably recommend it over the other Macs. Also, Commodore and Atari recently introduced PC compatible machines at very reasonable prices. They have only been introduced in the past month, but they are probably worth waiting to look at. The Amiga II is also due out soon. It will reportedly run all software for both the IBM PC and the current Amiga (dual processors). Right now, the Amiga is probably the most sophisticated PC technologically, but it doesn't have the software base. There are add-on boxes however that let the present Amiga run IBM software. In conclusion, there are some very nice machines being introduced now. They may not be available however for a couple of months. If she can wait, it might be worth it. If she likes the Mac, the Mac II looks especially interesting. For printers, the only reasonable alternative for the Mac is the Imagewriter series (I forget what the newest one is). It is the only printer I know of that is compatible with all of the Apple software. --David Date: Tuesday, 3 March 1987 12:21:51 EST From: Cam.Miller@gauss.ece.cmu.edu To: ewc@faraday.ece.cmu.edu DEFINITELY BUY HER A MAC! Mac's have the perfect combination of ease of learning and great capability (especially the Mac Plus or a Plus with an Apple hard disk). If you can buy her a laserwriter to go with it, your sister should follow you around thanking you for the rest of your life! Seriously, I have taught temporary secretaries with no previous word processing experience how to use Microsoft's Word in just a couple of days. Secretaries in this department who have any knowledge at all of Emacs and Scribe can teach THEMSELVES how to use Word. Plus there are a multitude of other great packages, like MacDraw and Overvue and Excel. I don't know how our office or the Grad Office ever functioned without Overvue (ask Elaine!) I'm not being paid by Apple - honest! I just think MacIntoshes are the greatest invention since the wheel. Date: 4 Mar 1987 10:31:28 EST From: GERRY.VAEREWYCK@NEWTON.ECE.CMU.EDU To: Czeck@faraday My sister had the use of a personal computer during her first year of college and found several significant problems with it. The main one was that her professors would not accept reports that were generated on a dot matrix printer because they were too hard to read. So unless you get her a letter quality printer the word-processing aspect is not too usefull. For other functions, such as doing physics assignments (she was a physics major), she felt that the vic-20 I had was just as capable and much easier to program. My wife (who is a physic's grad student) has been able to do every computer assignment and all the research related computations on the vic-20 as well. I would highly recommend not buying an expensive system because they are just not that useful. A nice general purpose system that is well supported it the commodore-64. And a used system with disk drive and printer can be obtained for $250. Alternatively papermate makes several very low cost word processing sytems. An Underwood and a TI- 55 will do almost anything for $50. My roommate feels that a personal computer is counterproductive for any task that does not HAVE to be done by a computer. This can be well supported by reading the "computers" section of any want-ads. Date: Fri, 6 Mar 87 12:57:13 est From: Kent Wilken To: czeck@eef Ed, There is an article in the current issue of Business Week (March 9) that reviews Commodore and mentions its new Amiga 500 and the pending introduction next month. That issue is on the table in the 2nd floor lounge area. Kent