Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: Computers

At 1:41 PM -0500 2/25/97, Richard W. Tarara wrote:
A couple more REAL differences between systems. Until system 8 (or
whatever Apple is going to call it) appears--where are all the Win95,96,97
jokes now ;-) --you can't get true multitasking on the Mac.

What do you mean by "true" multitasking? Macs have had multitasking since
the mid '80s. True, it is a cooperative type of mutlitasking that relies
on the good graces of the programmers, and there are some propeller heads
who claim pre-emptive multitasking is better (which is why Apple's NeXT
operating system will be pre-emptive), but Macs have had multitasking for a
long time. For example, I can serve web pages, ftp sessions, serve mail
with POP3 and SMTP, print (either locally or over the network), download
e-mail, copy files, share a public folder on my hard drive, browse the web,
and crunch numbers all simultaneously on my Mac. I see some slowdown if I
try to do too much at once, but that's to be expected; and the stability is
quite good (very few crashes).

When I started teaching here there was only one Macintosh in the Natural
Science division (our division has 20 members); now there are 13 Mac
people, some are new hires, others are converts who would never go back to
the Wintel platform willingly.

Larry



Larry K. Smith | Not everything that counts
Dept. of Physics mailto:Larry.Smith@snow.edu | can be counted; and not
Snow College fax: (801) 283-6879 | everything that can be
150 College Ave. phone: (801) 283-4021 x232 | counted counts.
Ephraim, UT 84627 USA | Albert Einstein