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Patrick states:
IMO the problem is *not* a lack of technology, either in hardware or OS.
It's simply a lack of awareness as to what's out there. You want a true
consumer appliance computer? Buy a Macintosh. We love ours. :-D
And, oh yes, you can run Windows NT on it, Denys, should you need to.
:-)
But then, I don't need to. ;-)
To which I answer:
Patrick, if you are happy with your Mac, that is excellent. It means the
tool you have chosen is performing to your expectations. That is the way
it should be. Me, I need stability, smooth multitasking and performance
which are reasons why I selected my current laptop and loaded Windows NT on
it. This combination is most stable and does everything I want it to do.
Consider this.
In the last several months I have been going around giving demonstrations
of our enterprise backup product at customer sites and at users group
meetings. I have it loaded on my NT laptop and, using a SCSI PC-card from
Adaptec, I attach an HP DDS-2 autoloader to said laptop. I can thus
demonstrate how our product handles the autoloader. I can also connect the
laptop to a network and demonstrate our product backing up an HP 3000
through the NT laptop to the autoloader or the NT laptop backing up to the
HP 3000. If the site is UNIX, I can do the same thing to the UNIX box.
What is really a lot of fun is to run the product's GUI on the laptop and
connect to an HP 3000, an NT server and a UNIX box. I can then send backups
all over the place, including the DDS-2 autoloader on the laptop, and at
the same time show a PowerPoint presentation.
When I get back to the office, I slip my laptop into the motorized docking
station and presto, I have a 17 inch monitor, a external keyboard and mouse
and the entire network at my disposal. (I am finishing a lengthy, detailed
article on why I chose my laptop and how I setup NT on it to do all the
above and much more. Perhaps I will get it published somewhere or I will
post it at the Hicomp web site.)
I can't do that with a Mac.
This is what I use my system for, and guess what? It works great for me.
Then Patrick signs off with:
Patrick, wishing I could use my Mac at work -- they won't let me :-(
Patrick, this is very simple to fix. If you can show management a good,
lucid case for replacing the current systems with Macs, detailing real cost
savings and demonstrable productivity enhancements, I suspect they will
listen to you. The only hurdle is to demonstrate convincingly that a user
does more work with whatever office suite and e-mail client you use on a
Mac VS the ones on the PC. Don't forget to include ODBC access to the HP
3000 while you are at it. When you have done that, please share it with
me, as I have been asking for this of Mac power users for the last several
years and never, ever got an answer.
Kind regards,
Denys. . .
Denys Beauchemin
HICOMP America, Inc.
(800) 323-8863 (281) 288-7438 Fax: (281) 355-6879
denys at hicomp.com www.hicomp.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick Santucci [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, 04 December, 1998 5:42 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The end of the PC (longish)
John Korb realizes:
> The current Intel IBM-PC hardware just can't handle all the
> appliance applications that users want to put on it.
And concludes:
> Maybe I'm all wet, but it seems to me that it won't be too many years and
> the problems of PC administration that we have at the office are going to
> reach the home and then the "appliance" users will force the companies
that
> produce PC products for the home to come up with something that the
average
> Joe on the street can administer without giving up too much Monday Night
> Football - something with one low-maintenance server and several
> no-maintenance thin clients (basically, GUI terminals).
>
> What do you think?
You are definately *not* all wet. I think the article Wirt originally
posted gave a hint of the future:
> Apple Computer's iMac was really the first
> high-profile consumer computer to
> accentuate the Internet connection, adding
> the prefix "i" to the Mac and designing the
> box so setting up a Net connection is as easy
> as possible.
Ease of use has always been a hallmark of the Macintosh. Understand, I
was weaned on CP/M and grew up on MS-DOS. I thought Windows was a great
advance. Then in 1990 I bought a Mac IIcx for my wife, a non-PC person,
so she could use it without having to ask me for too much help. I knew
it was easy to use because I'd seen them at work. (I also figured if I
didn't know anything about it, she couldn't ask me for help. ;-)
Then I started using it, and you know what? That old box now has
everything on it: a scanner, an external CD-ROM drive (it was built
before there were such things), a second monitor at times (true plug 'n'
play is great that way), a second hard drive (external), an external Zip
drive, a joystick, a modem, stereo speakers (driven by the on-board
stereo chip, no need to add a sound card), networked HP inkjet printer,
and occasionally a video camera. And all this runs *at the same time* on
a Mac built almost *10* years ago (the IIcx came out in 1989) with *no*
problems!!
I have since purchased a Mac clone (StarMax, PowerPC 604e) which can do
all this and more, and acts as a server to the IIcx as well. When my son
comes home from college he plugs in his PowerBook to our little network,
and has access to all the programs and the printer on the network, too.
And all of this happened prior to Apple putting USB in a single Mac,
which they are now doing. I know people who have all the stuff your
friend can't run on his PC, John, happily, productively, co-existing on
their Macs.
IMO the problem is *not* a lack of technology, either in hardware or OS.
It's simply a lack of awareness as to what's out there. You want a true
consumer appliance computer? Buy a Macintosh. We love ours. :-D
And, oh yes, you can run Windows NT on it, Denys, should you need to.
:-)
But then, I don't need to. ;-)
Patrick, wishing I could use my Mac at work -- they won't let me :-(
--
Patrick Santucci
Technical Services Systems Programmer
KVI, a division of Seabury & Smith, Inc.
Visit our site! http://www.kvi-ins.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"If they try to rush me, I always say, 'I've only got
one other speed -- and it's slower.'" ~ Glenn Ford
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