Sender: crough45 AT amc DOT de Message-Id: <97Sep13.172240gmt+0100.11649@internet01.amc.de> Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 16:27:42 +0100 From: Chris Croughton Mime-Version: 1.0 To: adalee AT sendit DOT sendit DOT nodak DOT edu Cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com Subject: Re: 32bit DOS. Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Precedence: bulk Adam W Lee wrote: > Screw backwards compatibility... If we're going to take a > step ahead we can't be looking back... In which case you lose the market before you start. If you write a completely new O/S which can't run the old applications, no-one except hackers will bother with it. That's the problem with Linux, people need to use the computer with applications which provide the facilities they need, and the applications just aren't there. There's nothing to touch Word7 for WP, or CakeWalk and Noteworthy for music, and the few applications which are attempting to get there aren't compatible. So if I'm sent a Word document, or a Noteworthy music file, am I going to just say "I can't use this" or am I going to use Windows and a commercial product? Or am I going to take half a century rewriting the application? Windows is successful because of its applications. The PC was successful because of the applications for it (and because it was an order of magnitude cheaper than the minicomputers which were the only alternative). > We could have such better processors (Alphas) by now if we > weren't so damned worried about still being able to run QEdit > and Space Invaders. We've got Alphas. And they cost far more than PCs for no noticable gain (at least no gain at all with DEC UNIX on them). We've got Sparcstations at a lower price, comparable to Macs. And the ordinary people don't buy them because they won't run the software which is needed. Sure, a Sparcstation will run wonderful CAD/CAM programs. That doesn't help a busnessman who needs to run an accounting system. Sure, there are AlphaStations which will run TeX. That doesn't help a secretary who needs to prepare stuff in Word and integrate with charts prepared by Excel from a database and make transparencies of the result. If you don't have compatibility you fail. That's what IBM found with the PS/2 range - superior hardware, a potentially much better peripheral bus - and people said "why should I throw away everything I've got and pay again for replacements?" and went out and bought clones of the original PC. We've had 'better' processors than the x86 series for well over a decade. The Amiga used the 68000 series, and look where that got - a games machine with very few applications. SparcStations have been around for several years, and are still only seen as options in companies and universities, not as home machines. When you have your OS and all the applications, with backward compatibility (or an offer to pay to type in everyone's data into the new formats), you might get some buyers. But compatibility, in the real world, is essential. I have friends who bought Amstrad PCW machines (basically CP/M based word processor machines, with their own disk format etc.). Most of them are still using them, because they have too much tied up in the old system to go to something 'better'. They have megabytes of data on the old disks and in the old format, and they can't afford either to lose that or to pay to have it converted. I have friends in business who are using PICK, and can't afford to change to a new system because all their stock is in the old system, and they can't close down for a month or two to convert (and to retrain the staff). Chris C