Conference napalm::commusic_v1

> graphical user interface.  For a home machine, that's always made the Mac
> the obvious choice.  However, now that MicroSoft Windows is becoming 

Presuming you're not considering the Amiga, of course. If, on the other hand,
you are *not* ruling out the Amiga, I'll simply refer you to the reams of
discussion in previous notes which point out the machine's myriad advantages...

Bob

    From comments and letters I see in the music comix, the 3 biggest
    selling software sequencers are
    
    Vision - MAC
    Performer - MAC
    Cakewalk - PC (&MAC?)
    
    I think the choice is clear - by the time you stuff enough graphix on
    the PC to make Windows usable, you've far outstripped the cost of a
    MAC.  Not to mention having to find out if the various PC sequencers
    really do use the Windows 3.0 interface.
    
    INCOMING !
    
    karl
    
    p.s. big used MAC market these days, good boxes cheap

    
    Don't forget TRAX and MasterTracks.  TRAX cost me about 65 bux. 
    Midi interfaces on the Mac are cheaper too.
    
    Like Karl, I'm ducking too!!
    
    -Ed
    

> Comments in .1 about considering Amiga

I didn't consider the Amiga (maybe unfairly) because of our need for games,
educational sofware, and decent word (or document) processing.  I guess I 
was picturing the Amiga as good for sequencing exclusively.  You say that's
a mistake?

>   from .2:
>    by the time you stuff enough graphix on
>    the PC to make Windows usable, you've far outstripped the cost of a
>    MAC.  Not to mention having to find out if the various PC sequencers
>    really do use the Windows 3.0 interface.

That's exactly what I was wondering about.  Does the investment required to
support and purchase MicroSoft Windows match the initial cost for a Mac, which
has the graphical interface already built in.  

By the way, I'm assuming I'd need a 386-based machine to run Windows.

Peter

    .. not to mention that Windows 3.0 is, to put it kindly, fragile, touchy
    and buggy, and snotty about what mouse will work on what port for what
    application - oh, and you need big memory, and have to worry about 
    interrupt vectors and extended/LIMS meory issues.. should I go on ?
    
    Re memory - Vision and Performer recommend 1MB minimum 1.5 and up
    recommended.  I have a MAC+ with 2.5 MB and have never exceeded 1.2
    MB usage running Performer v3.61 with a large (16 trax x 12 minutes)
    composition loaded.
    
    karl

    Here's some notes to go look into.  #1274 is the note that you were
    thinking of.
    
 Topic  Author               Date         Repl  Title
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1072    LEDS::ORIN         16-DEC-1987     9  Mark of the Unicorn Performer v2.0 Available
  1074  HPSRAD::NORCROSS     18-DEC-1987   152  Passport MasterTracks Pro Sequencer
  1154   CURIE::THACKERAY    16-JAN-1988     9  Computer Stuff for Scoring & Sequencing
  1274  AKOV68::EATOND       24-MAR-1988    48  Who's Using What Sequencers (Sequencer/User Directory)
  1326  NYJMIS::JENKINS      21-APR-1988    40  Recommendation - Sequencer For Live Use (Gigs)
  1347  MARVIN::SCOTT         2-MAY-1988     7  Atari ST Sequencer Software - Comparisons
  1425  LOLITA::DIORIO        1-JUN-1988    26  IBM MIDI choices: Interface? Software?
  1567  BENTLY::EVANS        25-JUL-1988     3  MAC+sequencer+printer+MIDI??
  1982  RDGENG::MCNAUGHTON    3-MAY-1989    13  Steinberg M.ROS and CUBASE (or CUBIT) Discussion
  2031  KALLON::EIRIKUR      20-JUN-1989    14  Rhapsody Sequencer for Macintosh
  2046   SWAV1::STEWART      14-JUL-1989    12  Cakewalk Sequencer for IBM/MSDOS Machines
  2121     4GL::DICKSON      18-SEP-1989    13  Opcode Vision Sequencer for Macintosh
  2487      ID::CWALSH        6-NOV-1990    10  Ballade sequencer for IBM PC  compatibles

	I'd recommend the Mac.  Most people I know who have PC's (including 386
	type machines) don't run windows excepts for the occasional game
	and maybe an application that needs it.  Windows is slow and
	clunky.  I don't like the interface, but maybe that is because
	I'm used to the Mac, I don't know.

	I use a Mac LC with 10 meg of ram and the VRAM upgrade (the VRAM upgrade
	allows 8bit color at 649x480 on the HiRes RGB screens).  I used it
	only a small amount with Vision.  I'd kinda taken a MIDI break so
	I have't had the time to work a lot with Vision on the LC.  I did
	use it a lot on my old plus.

	If you want to keep cost down, look at Atari ST.  For the real long
	term the ST is probably a dead market but they are plentiful and
	cheap on the used market, it has excellent games and WordPerfect
	runs on it.  There are also tons of excellent MIDI software titles
	available, including excellent sequencers NOtator and Cubase.
	A used 1040 runs between 400 and 600 $$.  (BTW, Cubase is also 
	available on the Mac and I think I am going to switch to that).
	And you never know, Atari might just come back, there new line
	of computers, including the 68030 based TT and the new STes are
	doing ok.

	I'd look at Performer, Vision, and Cubase on the Mac (there are
	other good ones, including Mastertracks Pro and Pro 4 from
	Passport and Beyond from Dr. Ts -- its ok I've heard).

	Mastertracks Pro on the IBM has a Windows version I've seen advertised.

	Good luck

	Chad

Re .4:

Well, since you asked- yes, thinking of the Amiga as *just* for sequencing is
a bigtime mistake. In fact, to be honest, although I think Bars and Pipes
Professional is among the best sequencers available, the market acceptance of
the Mac for musical uses is definitely higher- market share doesn't necessarily
mean superiority, mind you, but it can be more important (to some) in selecting
a machine. (BTW, you can also get MasterTracks Pro, KCS, and all of Dr. T's line
on the Amiga as well.) There's also the 4 built-in sound channels (yeah, 8-bit,
so sue me), as well as ready availability of inexpensive sampler hardware.

The Amiga has had a multitasking OS since day 1, and an extremely efficient one
at that. Its current "pigeonhole" is multimedia; using Bars and Pipes, an Amiga
multimedia presentation was a major factor in the success of the next host city
for the Olympics (OK, so I forgot the city!). You can do DTP, database,
graphics, spreadsheets- all simultaneously, of course. Video applications have
also gotten a *huge* boost from the universal accolades given the NewTek Video
Toaster.

DeluxePaint and Superbase Pro *started* on the Amiga and were ported to the
I*M beast. Games, unfortunately for the Amiga's "image," are considered by many
to be the Amiga's raison d'etre.

SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) settled on the Amiga as their
desktop "access machine" for their various computers and supercomputers some
time ago, and have a super VT emulation terminal program available (for free).
The remainder of the PD universe is rich with pro-level contributions as well.

Give_em_an_inch_and_they'll_take_a_yard_Bob

	re: Amiga

	On paper the machine looks awesome.  even watching some of the
	graphics demos it looks great.  Biut every Amiga, large or small,
	that I've seen, looks like crap on the screen.  It may be the
	monitors they have always had hooked up (Commodore ones) but thge
	screen looked like mid-80s technology (text and so forth).  It looks
	no-where near as polished and professional as the Mac screens/GUI.
	It looks clunky and gross.  Sorry to say such harsh words but there
	are no better ones to describe it.

	The graphics hardware is pretty neat though.

	Chad

Re .9:

In short, yes and no. I agree about the non-interlaced resolution; the decision
to go this route on the Amiga was unfortunate, IMHO. However, 3000's (and
2000 and 500 machines with an added board) provide clean, high-quality
high-res displays comparable with the best a Mac can do. Really. And yes, the
better monitors do make a difference. (And no, I have neither a "flicker-fixer"
board *nor* a better monitor...sigh...)

And now, back to the central skirmish...

    Re .9:
    
>   But every Amiga, large or small, that I've seen, looks like crap on
>   the screen.  It may be the monitors they have always had hooked up
>   (Commodore ones) but the screen looked like mid-80s technology (text
>   and so forth).  It looks no-where near as polished and professional as
>   the Mac screens/GUI.  It looks clunky and gross.  Sorry to say such
>   harsh words but there are no better ones to describe it.
    
    You're a bit behind the times, Amiga-wise.  While the default screen
    modes and standard monitor are "clunky", there are now deinterlacing
    accessories for all models that will work to provide a crisp SVGA image
    that would meet your standards.  The A3000 comes with this standard (if
    you're in the LTN1 area sometime, I'd suggest you check out the A3000
    on Bruce Moore's desk 8^).
    
    AmigaDOS 2.0 has cleaned up the ("Workbench") GUI also.  The Workbench
    1.3 default colors were admittedly garish, but they're easily changed to
    suit the user.  You're also free to substitute your own icons.

>   The graphics hardware is pretty neat though.
    
    The Amiga custom chips give even the stock 7MHz 68000 model decent
    performance.  (Most Macintosh models interrupt the CPU to do the dirty
    work of screen painting, at a serious performance cost.)
    
    AmigaDOS' multitasking is the secret to its success as a multi-media
    machine, but it also means I can be editing (multiple) files using my
    true WYSIWYG word processor (ProWrite) while running a graphing macro
    on my spreadsheet (SuperPlan), downloading files with my communications
    program (Handshake -- one of several good VT200 shareware emulators),
    and unpacking downloaded archives using the command line interface (CLI
    or Shell) or a full-screen utility (DiskMaster).  (That's just the
    "productivity" side -- do you want to hear about "creativity"? 8^)
    
    Granted, this level of multitasking will need more than the standard
    512KB/1MB that most Amigas start with.  It will also expect enough disk
    resources (hard disk, floppies, or RAM disk) to keep the applications
    from stalling, though AmigaDOS is pretty good about volume recognition
    and prompting for diskettes that aren't currently inserted in drives.
    
    You're quite welcome to drop into the BOMBE::AMIGA conference for all
    the additional information you could possibly handle, including
    pointers to thousands of freely-distributable (public domain and
    "shareware" -- about 450MB worth) programs available for downloading
    from the network.  Press KP7 to add this file to your notebook.

	Your need for games spells Amiga.
	Educational softwaare is now pretty good.
	For a list of Amiga s/w, go to a dealer and buy AC/Guide: Amiga,
	a magazine format that lists all software by categorie
Tom

    
    
    I guess the other clone users are intimidated by the overwhelming
    response of the Mac/Amiga lobby.  I like the Amiga, and the Atari, and
    I'm curious about the Mac.  But I don't think I can go buy a
    usable configuration on any of those machines for $1300.  Can I?
    
    I know I can go buy a 386sx with color VGA and a 40 meg. hard disk for
    that amount...  add a MIDI interface for a C-note and Cakewalk for
    about the same, and I've got a graphically oriented, mouse controlled
    sequencing machine for $1500.  
    
    What would it cost for an equivalent capability on the other platforms?
    
    

    BTW, a recent issue of Keyboard (or was it Electronic Musician) did a
    feature article summarizing all the desktop based sequencers currently
    available for the PC, Atari, Mac and Amiga.
    
    len.
     

    Price : used MAC Plus, 2.5 MB of Apple memory, 45MB 3rd-party SCSI
    drive.  $1Kilobux.  Performer $270.  Could've used a $99 serial to
    MIDI interface, but upgraded to MIDI Time Piece ($400) to include 
    SMPTE and MIDI patchbay functionality.  
    
    Effective price $1370.
    
    karl

	Amiga 500	$500
	ram add to 1M	$ 99
	spare disk drive$125
	bars & pipes	$200
	MIDI ECE	$ 58
	Monitor		$300? (color)
	____________________
			$1282
Tom

    
    
    but let's be sure that we're comparing comparable (i.e. new vs. used,
    color vs. monochrome) gear.
    
    What about Atari?  What are the current models (those being sold as
    "new") and what does it take to do sequencing with them?
    

    Having perused the latest Amiga World advertising (and sticking with
    reputable sources), one can configure a viable Amiga system for MIDI
    use for under $1000.  There are a number of choices that one can make
    that will bump the price into the $1500 range.
    
    MIDI Sequencer Software:
      -	Dr. T's Tiger Cub is a good general-purpose offering (it can even
    	support the Amiga's four-voice built-in stereo channels if you
    	haven't yet settled on a MIDI synthesizer).  It's available for
    	about $60 through the mail.
      -	The other Dr. T's modules are also available to meet specific
    	needs.
      -	As noted elsewhere, Bars & Pipes ($120) and Bars & Pipes Professional
    	($200) seem to be the ultimate MIDI sequencers for the Amiga.
    
    MIDI Interfaces range from $50-75.  Most attach to the RS232 serial port.
    
    Minimum (1MB, 2 floppy drives) system:  (See also .17)
    	A500 System Unit
    	  - 7MHz 68000 CPU
    	  - 512KB RAM
    	  - 3.5" Floppy (880KB formatted) Disk Drive
    	  - Mouse
    	  - AmigaDOS 1.3 multi-tasking operating system
    	  - Workbench 1.3.2 windowing system
    	A501 Clock/Memory Expansion (or equivalent)
    	  - Battery backed-up clock
    	  - 512KB RAM (brings total to 1MB)	
    	Second Floppy Drive
    	Commodore 1084S Analog RGB monitor with stereo speakers
    
    The Memory Location in Wellesley, MA sells this package for $800, but
    careful shopping will reduce it by at LEAST $50.  The current A500
    "Power Up" promotion reduces it by $300! (trade in the user's guide
    cover and serial number from your old 8-bit Commodore system)
    
    Hard Drive Upgrades:  (Deduct $100 to omit the second floppy drive)
    	Amiga 590 Hard Disk Controller, $400
    	  - 20MB ST-506 drive (half-height 3.5", should you care to upgrade)
    	  - Sockets for 2MB of 4x256K CMOS DRAM ($50/MB these days)
    	  - External SCSI jack for up to seven additional drives
    	GVP A500 HD8 Series II, $500 (52MB)
    	  - Choice of Low Profile 3.5" SCIS drive
    	  - Sockets for up to 8MB of SIMMs
    	  - External SCSI jack for up to seven additional drives
    	Supra 500XP-512K, $350 (20MB) / $500 (52MB) / $700 (105MB)
    	  - Choice of half-height 3.5" SCSI drive
    	  - 512KB of 4x256K DRAM installed
    	  - Sockets for 2MB of 4x256K DRAM or 8MB of 4x1M DRAM
    	  - External SCSI jack for up to seven additional drives
    
    The Bottom Line:
    	System #1 (1MB 2 floppy drives)
    	  - Tiger Cub			$ 60
    	  - MIDI Interface		  60
    	  - A500P 2-drive Package	 750
    					====
    	    Total			$870
    
    	System #2 (1.5MB 20MB Hard Drive)
    	  - Tiger Cub			$ 60
    	  - MIDI Interface		  60
    	  - A500P 1-drive Package	 650
    	  - Supra 500XP-512 w/20MB	 350
    					====
    	    Total		       $1120
    
    	System #3 (1.5MB 52MB Hard Drive)
    	  - Bars & Pipes Professional	$200
    	  - MIDI Interface		  60
    	  - A500P 1MB/1-drive Package	 650
    	  - Supra 500XP-512 w/52MB	 500
    					====
    	    Total		       $1410
    
    With careful shopping, you can probably beat this.  If you or a friend
    have a dusty 8-bit Commodore home computer, you can do at least another
    $200 better! (but act soon)
    
    One important point.  THESE ARE NOT SKINNY SYSTEMS.  While the Amiga
    (like its competitors) appreciates additional memory, a 1MB system is
    quite viable for most users.  Certain applications (DTP, for example)
    use LOTS of memory, so the ability to configure up to 9MB (without
    having to fool with "extended" vs "expanded" considerations 8^) comes
    in handy.  My belief is that Amiga 500 and 2000 systems are "in
    balance" (CPU vs memory vs I/O capability) when they have 3MB and a
    hard disk.  My best guess is that Amiga 68020/68030 systems are in
    balance at 5MB and 9MB, respectively (a SWAG of the first order).

    Here's a quick cut at the cost of an Atari system.  These prices aren't
    exact, just rough estimates of where *mail-order* prices currently lie.
     
    Atari 1040 STE (1 meg memory)  $500
    Atari mono monitor 		   $200   
    Atari color monitor		   $300   (optional, see below)
    Dr. T's Tiger Cub		   $75	  (current list is $139)
    Monitor switch box		   $40    (needed if you want to hook both 
    					   monitors to the STe)
    				  ______
    
    			Total	   $775 with mono only
    				  $1115 with both monitors
    
    1.  The STE allows memory expansion woth SIMMs up to 4 mb.
    
    2.  The STE will drive a TV set for color stuff (like games for the
    	kids).  Most "serious" programs (MIDI, word processors, etc.) run in
    	monochrome which has the highest resolution.  So you *need* the
    	mono monitor, you may be able to live with using your TV to save
    	the $$ for the color tube.
    
    3.  Hard drives are available, but I don't have prices handy.  You can
    	get a 40 Mb drive for about $500.
    
    4.	If you're really cheap, you can skip Tiger Cub and get a copy of
    	Alchimie Jr. which is a shareware (free) sequencer with pro-level
    	features.
    
    							Brian

Hey, these Amiga and Atari owners are pretty intense, huh?

Seriously, I didn't expect to hear such great things about the Amiga and 
Atari machines.  I'll admit I'm leaning toward the Mac, but after reading
all this info, I may do a little more investigating before I commit.

I did stop by the local Apple dealer (ComputerTown) over the weekend...just 
for a preliminary peek at the LC.  I was told to expect some sales to be 
advertised in the Boston Globe starting on Labor Day.

I'll also check out the other conferences.  

Thanks for the info,

Peter

    Re .21:                                                    
    
>   Hey, these Amiga and Atari owners are pretty intense, huh?
    
    Guilty as charged.  We're both loyal to systems that have been
    unappreciated while MS-DOS systems have swamped the marketplace.

>   Seriously, I didn't expect to hear such great things about the Amiga and
>   Atari machines.  I'll admit I'm leaning toward the Mac, but after reading
>   all this info, I may do a little more investigating before I commit.
    
    That's all we ask.  In the music and home productivity areas, both
    systems have a LOT to commend them (though all too many people think of
    both the Amiga and Atari ST as "game" machines).  I'd still be happy to
    show you around either my own A500 system (in Newton, MA) or the A3000
    that's been turning the heads of Macintosh II users here at LTN1.

Just one thing before you make a decision:

Poke around a bit in stores and magazines looking at software availability and
prices.  Ditto hardware.  Try Computer Shopper (a magazine) for example.

One of the things I like about the PC is that (with the exception of MIDI s/w!)
nearly anything that is published is available for PC.  This is probably
true for Mac s/w as well, though there may not be quite as much hardware stuff
available.  There may be A or SOME good (you name it...word processors) available
on the Amiga or the Atari, but just about any editor word processor that you have
ever heard of is on the PC.

Also check out the shareware market.  This is a great concept...it essentially
allows you to try before you buy.  I don't know about Mac, Amiga, or Atari,
but this market is flourishing in the PC world.  I would not want a machine
for which you could not get this kind of s/w.

Finally, re hardware:   A nice thing about the PC is that you can buy in bits
and pieces and upgrade, getting the hardware from the cheapest sources.  Can you
upgrade a Mac from monochrome to color, or do you have to trade it in?  If the
latter, is it more expensive than a PC upgrade?

I'm telling you some of the things that I like about the PC.  I'm NOT slamming
any of the other systems, since I just don't know much about them.   You might
try some of the conferences on these machines to get some feeling for what
is around.  You might even find an appropriate machine for sale in the
conferences.

Burns

	free and share software flourishes for the Amiga. Advance demos of
	commercial s/w are often available through the same channels.
	The Amiga is in color to start with.  There is no color upgrade.
	You can't get a monochrome Amiga.
	tom

 Regarding PD for the Amiga:  There is  lots of PD/Shareware stuff.
 This is partially because the multitasking OS, and special chips
 attracted the adventurous hackers and because generally people see the
 Amiga as a system that is too good for the mediocre support that Commodore
 has given it. The system software is also heavily C oriented and
 U*ix stuff gets ported all of the time. Workstation users are especially
 attracted to it.

 For those that need those IBM or MAC wordprocessors, the Amiga can
 change to a monochome MAC using AMAX for roughly $350. It runs faster
 than the equivilvent 680x0 based MAC but current versions don't
 support MIDI. Atari also offers quality "hostile ports" of the MAC.

 A 286 AT on a board can be added to either a A500 or
 a A2000 for about the same price. These allow you to multitask the
 PC with the regular Amiga OS.

 In terms of upgrading I think the Amiga also beats the MAC.
 All of the models share the same basic architecture including color
 and compatible graphics and sound. Although you can find programs that
 will not run on the 68030 CPU machines, you will not find seperate versions 
 of a program sold for different Amiga models. There are none of the long 
 requirement lists on the software package. 

 There is less MIDI software for the Amiga than the other three contenders.
 If you are getting a computer primarily for MIDI, I suspect MAC is best.
 You will pay more to get on board, but you find the editors, librarians,
 MIDI learning software etc. on the MAC first and sometimes only on the MAC.

 If you are getting a computer primarily for MIDI and you want to save
 money, the Atari looks real good.  

 If you are getting a computer for MIDI, games, graphics and the usual 
 computer stuff from a company somewhat more supportive than Atari, and 
 price matters, Amiga is there.

 If you are getting a computer primarily to have access to lots of
 software for a large variety of interests, and you want to buy the
 components cheap, and you get into switch and swap, you can't beat
 the clones. 

 My 8 pennies worth.
 Dave

    ..and if you want to run a smooth, powerful, professional, windows from
    the ground up, top of the line package like Vision or Performer, you 
    can buy a cost-effective MAC.  
    
    karl

    As far as PD software goes, I suspect all the machines are well
    supported.  The bulk of what *I* run on my Atari is PD.  In fact, the
    Amiga and Atari may have an edge here as there is more *incentive* for
    PD stuff to be written, since less commercial stuff is available.
    
    For the records, PC and Mac emulators are also available for the Atari.
    
    Confused yet?  You should go to a dealer like the Bit Bucket in Newton
    which actually sells PC clones, Amigas and Ataris and see them all in
    one place.  You can expect dealers to badmouth whatever brands they
    don't carry, so it's nice to visit a dealer that sells more than one
    type of PC, he has less of an axe to grind.
    
    Parting comment:  Since you own a DW-8000, and you mentioned you wanted
    an editor/librarian, I'd suggest you see if such a package is available
    for *any* computer, as this may have some impact on your choice.  I.e.
    why buy a Mac if the only DW-8000 editor runs on the IBM PC.
    
    							Brian

    Brian has made a (perhaps the only) valid point ... hardware is
    basically going commodity.  Pick your software, then get a machine that
    runs the software.
    
    Axiom: Cheap, fast, good.  Choose two.
    
    I have an Atari 1040, and use it for MIDI and some basic word
    processing (SEDT - shareware).  It's not what I would consider durable,
    but it doesn't get beat on too much.  I run Master Tracks Pro.  I like
    it, but think that Notator (or Cubase) would be superior. The Atari is
    not well built, and (IMO) has a cheesy O/S.  Hard drives are relatively
    expensive unless you like to hack around a bit.  I don't.  MIDI ports
    are built-in, which I find to be very convenient.
    
    I've seen a few Amigas and some folks I know have them as well.  Some
    of the graphics are incredible.  The O/S multitasks (yawn) ... is it
    necessary?  Not for me - maybe for others.  I don't care for the way it's
    built (necessarily), and don't feel comfortable about the corporate
    commitment of Commodore.  No built-in MIDI ports, and (again, IMO)
    lousy screen resolution without hoop-jumping.  I chose Atari over Amiga
    for MIDI, and haven't regretted it yet.
    
    I work with everything from workstations to Macintosh(es) to PCs, and
    have found this to be true: the best (computing platform) will be
    answered in a religious fashion - it's a very personal thing.  Kinda
    like which text editor roolz.
    
    There are good games available for lots of platforms.  What kind of
    "letter writing" is Sheryl into?  Do you need a package like Microsoft
    Word (or Excel for spreadsheets)?  Have you thought about "household"
    software, like family budget planning, tax prep s/w, etc?
    
    I've seen some really slick education-type packages for DOS machines,
    including geography software (great for social studies) and
    encyclop�dia type stuff as well.  What types of software are you
    looking for in this arena?
    
    Sequencers?  Mac tops include Performer (I think someone mentioned this
    in passing already ;-), Master Tracks Pro-4, Vision, Cubase; I believe
    Notator also runs on the Mac now.  PC pgms include Voyetra, MTP, and
    Cakewalk.  Is notation capability important?  There aren't many PC
    sequencers that use windows to any great degree (yet).
    
    Patch Editor/Librarian?  Probably ought to go with a user-configurable
    generic (forget the formal term for them).  OpCode (the Vision folks)
    have a nice one for the Mac; I don't remember seeing too many for
    PCs/clones.
    
    Like Karl, I got my system used, and would recommend looking around
    before buying new.  There are some serious deals waiting out there.
    
    One more thought - the bigger the hard drive, the better, generally
    speaking.  A 40Mb hard drive can get full FAST.  Good luck.
    
+b

    Well, I've long been a repeater of what we have called "Fehskens Rule",
    which is "find the software you need, then buy the hardware that
    runs it".
    
    But, after some more thinking, I think you HAVE to have some regard
    for the "acceptance" of the hardware you intend to buy.
    
    When I bought my Betamax (VCR), it had all the software/support/etc
    that I needed.   IT DOESN'T NOW, and that has been a royal pain.
    
    I've found that the software I need tends to be available for ALL the
    systems and Fehskens rule is to a large extent predicated on the
    presumption that it's not.
    
    At the risk of infuriating the devotees of particular machines, here
    was my conclusion about the "futures" of the various PC's:
    
    	Atari - a dying breed
    	Amiga - great hardware, but barely holding it's own.  Future
    		seems limited
    	IBM PC - lousy hardware, lousy software, great future (go figure?)
    	Mac - nice hardware, great software, expensive but has a good
    		future
    
    To be honest, I wouldn't touch an Atari unless I was to convince myself
    that I'm getting a "BOX" to run a particular application instead of
    a PC which I would expect to expand my usage of.
    
    Amiga seems like a crapshoot.  I'm not inclined to take risks like this
    anymore.  Beta was clearly superior to VHS and look what happened to
    it.
    
    IBM PC - clearly it's gonna be around "forever" (at least 6 more
    years), and the clones are some of the best deals, but actually it
    seems significantly weaker than the Mac in the music department.
    
    Mac - this is what I would pick.  It's actually losing market share,
    but it has a large enough user base such that technical obsolesence
    will probably kick in before market factors.  I think it's the
    clear technical winner in contest with the IBM.  It costs WAY too
    much, but I think the cost is also offset by other factors.
    
    OK - I said it.  These are MY impressions.  Your mileage may vary, and
    no doubt users of all these systems will pick bones with what I've
    said.
    
    	db

    Interesting observations, Dave.  My perception is that with the recent
    plunge in prices of new MACs, there is a large market of reasonably
    priced used MACs out there, pushed down primarily by the low price on
    the Classic.  So I think there's approximate parity when you load the
    PC, even clones, with enough H/W and S/W to do windows and MIDI.
    
    karl

Hi folks !

Some notes from my side.

I'm wondering about the ATARI proces mentioned (by Brian ?). The 1040 STFM is
sold here for less than 800 DM including monitor, that's about 470$. And most
of the times the prices are lower in the states anyway.... (sigh).

Notator is not available on the Mac according to an interview for a special
section on Macs in the German Keyboards. Cubase on Mac is now fuctionally
equivalent to the ATARI version.

Given the price of the ATARI and the quality of the SW, I would always
recommend this solution as the Mac is way too expensive and the SW on the IBM
PCs is lousy in terms of user interface. You don't NEED memory expansion and
you don't need a hard disk for running these sequencers. And if you really want
to run PC applications sometimes you may use a SW emulator or one of the HW
emulutor. 

my 20 Pfennig

	Richard

    Semi-facetious remark: the Atari/Amiga/Mac GUIs will spoil you for the
    VMS/Ultrix command-line interface! MS-DOS will make you appreciate the
    machines you work on 8 hours per day!
    
    Re public domain software: the IBMPC_SHAREWARE notes conference
    contains pointers to an unbelievable quantity of stuff available over
    the Easynet -- I think we're talking several hundred megabytes worth.
    Relatively little is MIDI-oriented, but there are scads of programs for
    every other purpose. Check the notes conference for the file SIMIBM.DAT
    for a set of one-line descriptions... it's about 6000 lines long!
    
    If you remain interested in PCs after all this 68000-based enthusiasm,
    you might consider attending the computer show at the Northeast Trade
    Center in Woburn, MA (off 128) from 10-3 on Saturday September 7.
    Vendors at these shows commonly sell for less than mail order. There
    may be some Basement Inc. guys selling MIDI stuff too... to be avoided,
    IMO (contact me off-line for a horror story which cannot be put into
    notes per Digital policy).

	The Amiga is a no-risk machine if you buy a used 2000 and put a
	286 card in it and get AMAX MacIntosh emulator, and C64 emulation
	software.  Maybe you could find a used one with all this stuff.
Tom

    re: .33
    
    >        The Amiga is a no-risk machine if you buy a used 2000 and put a
    >        286 card in it and get AMAX MacIntosh emulator, and C64
    >	    emulation software. 
    
    Ignoring issues of hardware support, software support, price,
    and media compatability.
    
    I.E. if I buy a used 2000 and put all that stuff in it and the Amiga
    line gets discontinued:
    
    	1) Is it cheaper than an equivalent used Mac?
    
    	2) If I only run Mac software wouldn't I be better getting a mac?
    	
    	3) If I run Amiga software do I not risk not having any way to
    	   migrate to Mac
    
    	4) Do I not have risk if my my hardware or software breaks and
    	   support is no longer there?
    
    

>  re: .33
>    
>    >        The Amiga is a no-risk machine if you buy a used 2000 and put a
>    >        286 card in it and get AMAX MacIntosh emulator, and C64
>    >	    emulation software. 
>    
>    Ignoring issues of hardware support, software support, price,
>    and media compatability.
>>    
>    I.E. if I buy a used 2000 and put all that stuff in it and the Amiga
>    line gets discontinued:
There is absolutely no evidence that the Amiga line is in more danger than
the Mac.  There are about 3000000 Amigas; if the line were discontinued,
there is no reason to stop using your computer; it could still be repaired,
it could still get software, it will still have users groups.
>    
>    	1) Is it cheaper than an equivalent used Mac?
This question is a no-op, since a MacInstosh cannot act like an Amiga (or
maybe some one did make an emulator, I can't remember).  Can a Mac be a 286?
Can a Mac be a C64?  An Amiga can.
>    
>    	2) If I only run Mac software wouldn't I be better getting a mac?
If you only run an Amiga only setup on an Amiga, it is cheaper than a Mac.
>    	
>    	3) If I run Amiga software do I not risk not having any way to
>    	   migrate to Mac
Not if you use standard MIDI file format.  Also, you could choose MIDI 
software that was supported on both machines.  By the way, no one has ever
migrated from an Amiga to a Mac, it wouldn't make any sense.
This question also applies to VAXs, PCs, Crays, and Alphas.
>    
>    	4) Do I not have risk if my my hardware or software breaks >and
>    	   support is no longer there?
>    
The support is not going away before Mac support does.  
Tom

    Re .33/.34:                                               
    
    I'd hoped to bite my tongue from here out, but...
    
.33 The Amiga is a no-risk machine if you buy a used 2000 and put a
.33 286 card in it and get AMAX MacIntosh emulator, and C64
.33 emulation software.
    
    This probably states it more strongly than I would, but there's an
    important point behind it.  I see the existence of affordable emulator
    packages as letting me "have my cake and eat it too".
    
    I use the ATonce PC-AT emulator in my A500 to retain compatibility with
    the MS-DOS version of the project management (Qwiknet) tool that runs
    on my VAXstation at work.  It even multitasks, so I can do AmigaDOS
    work in the rest of the system.
    
    The AMAX package, atop a basic A500, gives Macintosh SE functionality
    for less than the cost of the Macintosh Classic (and with significantly
    better performance 8^).

.34 Ignoring issues of hardware support, software support, price,
.34 and media compatability.
.34 
.34 I.E. if I buy a used 2000 and put all that stuff in it and the Amiga
.34 line gets discontinued:
    
    I don't accept the third part of your question as an immediate
    likelihood.  Commodore's actually making money these days and it has
    bet its future on the Amiga.
    
.34 	1) Is it cheaper than an equivalent used Mac?
    
    	Possibly.  The equivalent used SE would need a CPU upgrade.
    
.34 	2) If I only run Mac software wouldn't I be better getting a mac?
    
    	Probably, but I doubt you'd ONLY run Mac software.  The "rest of
    	us" still suffer from sticker shock at the cost of Mac software.
    	While the best Macintosh products are generally more complete than
    	the best Amiga products, they're also twice as expensive.  The Amiga
    	boasts a selection of high quality productivity (WP, Spreadsheet, DTP, 
    	Database) and creativity tools to meet the needs of mere mortals.
    	My understanding is that Bars & Pipes Professional is every bit the
    	equal of MIDI sequencers available on other platforms.
    
    	ALL of them were built for AmigaDOS' windowing "from the ground up".
    	Most of them also support an ARexx port, which facilitates scripted
    	use and/or applicaton integration to meet user needs.
    	
.34 	3) If I run Amiga software do I not risk not having any way to
.34 	   migrate to Mac
    
    	I'm not sure what you're asking that's not also applicable to
    	MS-DOS applications that might later migrate to the Macintosh.
    	Macintosh media compatibility is less straight-forward than MS-DOS
    	compatibility (CrossDOS makes MS-DOS diskettes transparently
    	usable by AmigaDOS applications), but moving files isn't a problem.
    
.34 	4) Do I not have risk if my my hardware or software breaks and
.34 	   support is no longer there?
    
    	At this point, Commodore's profits are up.  The Amiga has passed
    	the 3 million mark and is a solid (if distant) third in system
    	and software sales.  Even Commodore VIC-II owners can still get
    	support (and that 8-bit system hasn't been manufactured in a decade)
    	through both Commodore dealers and third parties.  If Commodore
    	folded tomorrow, which is unlikely, the inertia would keep the
    	Amiga alive for several years.
    
    	Also, the Video Toaster (which is offered in a plain brown A2000 to
    	Macintosh users) has set the standard for affordable (under $10K)
    	desktop video systems, so there's an incentive for that segment of
    	the software publishing business to bolster Amiga support.  On the
    	whole, I'm optimistic.

    I have to add one comment to this otherwise lofty discussion.  I find
    the oft repeated justification for the PC "there's more software
    available" to border on specious.  That may be a meaningful criterion
    if you're a lot more than one user, or you really have a compulsion to
    routinely use 20 different sequencers or 30 different spreadsheets or
    40 different word processors.  And the fact that there are a lot of
    different sequencers or spreadsheets or word processors (or games)
    available on a particular machine doesn't necessarily imply that
    the *one* *you* want will be there.  Software developers don't make
    random commitments to particular platforms, they make a choice based
    on their needs, and the platform's ubiquity is only one of many needs.
    
    So, try before you buy.  Don't make your decision based on factors that
    don't really matter *to you*.  Having a lot of choices isn't a feature
    if what you really want isn't among them.
    
    len.
    

    re: .35
    
>There is absolutely no evidence that the Amiga line is in more danger than
>the Mac.  There are about 3000000 Amigas; 
    
    How many Macs are there.  I would say that if there are more Macs
    than there are Amigas, there's at least "some" evidence.
    
    > if the line were discontinued, there is no reason to stop using your
    > computer; it could still be repaired, it could still get software, it
    > will still have users groups.
    
    Not always true. 
    
>>    	3) If I run Amiga software do I not risk not having any way to
>>    	   migrate to Mac
    
>Not if you use standard MIDI file format.  
    
    If all you ever plan to do is run a sequencer then buy any machine
    you want as you would buy any other dedicated hardware unit.  MC 500 
    users don't worry whether or not the MC 500 will run the latest version
    of lotus in two years from now.
    
    However, if your planning to run other software that doesn't have
    such a nice interchange standard...
    
    > Also, you could choose MIDI software that was supported on both 
    > machines.  
    
    Further limiting your choice of software...
    
    And of course, hoping that there aren't issues of data and media
    compatability...
    
    > By the way, no one has ever migrated from an Amiga to a Mac, it 
    > wouldn't make any sense.
    
    Not right now it wouldn't.  But it might...
    
>>    	4) Do I not have risk if my my hardware or software breaks >and
>>    	   support is no longer there?
    
> The support is not going away before Mac support does.  
    
    I'm sure Amiga owners and prospective Amiga owners will find this
    to be great news.
    
    Sorry Tom, but I've heard all this kind of stuff before (Betamax's,
    8-tracks, RCA Videodisks, etc.)
    
    I also know about the rose-colored lenses that owners of such equipment
    seem to wear because I've bought into a lot of "not the most popular"
    technologies and made similar kind of statements.
    
    	db

Re last several:

db- no offense, but I think it's a mistake to assume you were saying what
people "didn't want to hear," though I believe I know what you meant. It's also
possible those were things with which others simply don't agree; I really don't
think it's all that cut and dried. Actually, it seems to me that several noters
have been fairly willing to acknowledge accurate "hits" against their machine of
choice. (Which is great!)

I think terms like "support" (as in better), "risk" (as in greater), and even
"equivalent" (as in functionality per dollar spent) are all matters of
individual opinion. Adam Osborne's wild success did not accurately predict
his demise, as I recall. Despite disparities in installed base, the continued
viability of Mac, Amiga, Atari, IBM, and DEC machines really depends more on
their respective manufacturers' ability to keep up with the pace of today's
marketplace demands than on past successes, IMHO. That's a little trickier to
predict.

I think the original digressions from the innocent "Mac or IBM" question served
a great purpose for the basenoter, in exposing him to the number of issues
which make this a more complex decision than he knew. This thread contains a lot
of pretty objective comments, including opinions on some of each platform's
relative strengths and weaknesses. Eventually, each buyer has to make his *own*
assessments as to which software/hardware combo is "best" for him, and how it
stacks up against relative measurements of support, performance, flexibility,
and such. How often others have told *me* that, and how true it is!

My *personal* opinion is that Mac and IBM have done well at least *partially*
because they've been comfortably "pigeonholed" by the market. *Everyone* knows
that IBM is preferable for "serious" applications, and that Mac is for the
more "artistic" applications. Ironically, Amiga (again, IMHO) has gained
credibility not for its all-around ability, but because it can *finally* be
pigeonholed: as a video machine, thanks to the Video Toaster. Go figure...

Great note so far. Mr. Basenoter, I hope you realize we'll *all* be interested
in seeing what you do with this glut of information! And of course, COMMUSIC
offers just about any kind of support you need...

Cheers,
	Bob

 If you are going to go the compatibility at all costs route, then all the
 platforms are either doomed or accounted for through emulation (IMHO).
 
 By the time a full standard such as the ACE initiative is in place,
 everything with run on risc chips that are incompatible with all the 
 computers mentioned here. Sure there will be some intel/PC compatability
 thrown in, but everyone will have a statndard interface and a risc chip box.
 All the old software will be temporarily run on software emulators or 
 boards and everyone will complain about how they:
 o have inconsistant interfaces
 o won't multitask properly
 o go too slow
 o can't communicate with other programs

 All of the new software will be written to an interface standard and any
 box that can't run it goes the way of Betamax.

 Dave B.'s video tape anology is too simplistic.
 It looks something like today where PC is VHS and MAC is BETA,
 but the better scenario involves the writable CD that replaces VCRs of all
 kinds, DATs, CDs and cassettes.
  or
 The risc chip that runs so fast and sells so cheap that no one cares
 about all of those old fashioned computers, except to get an emulator
 as a transition.


 As for the Amiga, I think people are saying that there is enough
 of an installed base that someone will "take care" of it for awhile. 
 The NewTek Video Toster, which requires an Amiga regardless of the platform
 that uses it , goes a long way towards keeping the base alive until the
 single compatability standard  really takes hold. Unless Multimedia dies
 a very sudden death, there will be another few millon Amiga's out there
 when all of the "incompatibles" are moved to the basement.

 Is it typical DEC thinking not to see our own workstation/pcs superseding
 all of these compromise desktop computers?

 Dave

    Boy, wotta rathole...
    
    As far as long-term support, I might point out that you can *still*
    buy Commodore 64s and even 8-bit Atari XL machines can still be bought
    brand new!  There is still lots of software support for the Apple II
    (and I believe the IIgs is still technically in production) so there is
    some reason to believe that almoat *any* machine you buy today will be
    "supportable" in the future....at least the next five years.  
    
    Of course, the *bulk* of the market for Commodore 64s is probably
    people replacing dead units rather than new users deciding to jump on
    board, but of course, that's what a user worried about long-term
    support would care about.
    
    I already own most of the software I will probably ever need for my
    Atari.  So as long as I keep some backup copies and I can buy new CPUs
    when my old ones die, then I'm all set.
    
    BTW, one of my STs *did* die last night, as it turns out.  Bumming.....
    
    							Brian

    	Something than nobody has mentioned is the issue of screen size. 
    There may be lots of used Mac+ around for under 1K, but are you
    willing to put up with the 9" screen.  I may be spoiled by looking at a
    nice 19" monitor all day, but I find the Mac 9" screen unusable.  I
    know you can buy add on boards and monitors to solve this problem but
    its pretty expensive.  Buying a new Mac II solves this problem, but
    there aren't many used ones around and they are very expensive.
    
    	My vote for a general purpose machine to do MIDI, word processing,
    education and games has to go to a DOS/PC clone.  Unless you know exactly
    what you're going to run today and won't change your mind, the DOS/PC will
    offer the most future flexability.  I know its technically a little
    behind the Mac (atleast for ease of use and overall software
    integration), but then BETA was technically superior to VHS and we all
    know how that story ended.
    
    	A visit to just about any general purpose software store will show
    a mix of 70% DOS/PC, 20% Mac and 10% of everything else.  I think the
    public has voted and the PC has won.  I won't deny that the ST probably
    has better MIDI software and the Mac has better graphics software, but
    the DOS/PC has to win for all around availability of software.
    
    	Today you can buy a very nice 33Mhz 386 based system with 4MB of
    memory, 100MB of disk and a decent monitor for just about 2K.  A
    similar Mac will set you back 2.5K for an LC (slow), and 3.5K for an SI.
    Then you can have the pleasure of paying 25% more for the identical
    software titles for the Mac.
    
    	If you're really tight on budget, a 16Mhz 316sx machine can be had
    with 40MB disk and 2MB of memory and a B&W VGA monitor for ~$1200. 
    Don't be too tight on the initial system purchase, you'll probably
    spend another $500-1000 in software just to get a decent sequencer, word
    processor and a few other toys within the first 6 months.
    
    	I've heard alot of complaints about Windows performance, but I'm
    entirely happy with a cached 33MHz 368 with 4MB of memory.  Its
    certainly much faster than most VAX workstations.
    
    	MSDOS and Windows are not for the faint of heart if you stray away
    from simple hardware configurations and mainline software, but its
    certainly managable by a computer literate person.  Microsoft is
    working on a new multi-tasking OS that will work on atleast 386 and 
    later machines.  Some day (but don't hold your breath), this should
    solve some of the multi-tasking issues (actually the Apple multi-finder
    isn't so squeaky clean on this issue either...). 
    
    	Am I the only PC supporter in this conference???  I've got an ST, a
    Mac and a PC and its no comparison as far as I'm concerned for overall
    usefullness.  A last note to consider is that given DEC's commitment to
    sell PCs and the existing (and emerging), SoftPC technology.  You're
    probably most likely to be able to use a PC for DEC work at home unless
    you work in one of those well to do Mac based groups...
    
    Brian
    
    

Just to throw another wrench into the gears; Electronic Musician has
been blasted for providing lots of coverage for MAC and IBM PC software
and almost nothing for Amiga and Atari. This (at least to me) is a clue
as to what people are writing code for. I bought an IBM PC (I really wanted
a MAC, but the price/performance didn't cut it - the equivalent MAC performance
compared to an IBM PC is at least 40% more) 386 system. I'll be the first to
admit that MSDOS it less than elegant (an absolute mess would be a better
description of it). I didn't even bother looking at either the Amiga or
the Atari, because of what I percieved as limited long term growth of the 
platform.

If EM doesn't write a lot about the platform, I can only assume that there
isn't as much to choose from. I'm sure that there is substantial software
for all platforms, but I'm really interested in keeping up over time.

The original questions were about MAC and IBM PC software. This also leaves
me to believe that there is a desire to stay in the mainstream of software.
We can all go down a rat hole and say that one platform is the best, and
those who have one over the other will have differing opinions. I want to get
into a fully digital recording studio (ie, direct to hard disk) - this leaves
MAC and IBM PC's. Again, I don't think that one solution is necessarily best,
you have to figure out what your goals are and follow that route. With the MAC
and the IBM PC's growth into multi-media, there is at most a time lag between
innovations before the more common environment catches up. I'd reccomend
thinking about the long term, and that pretty much eliminates Amiga and 
Atari. There are hundreds of millions of dollars going into software 
development for the MAC and IBM PC that I don't think is happening for either
the Amiga or Atari - This makes a difference to me.

								Jens

>With the MAC
>and the IBM PC's growth into multi-media, there is at most a time lag between
>innovations before the more common environment catches up. I'd reccomend
>thinking about the long term, and that pretty much eliminates Amiga and 
>Atari.

 Although there is some truth here, I don't think you have proved this.

 One more time from the top:

 *The* leading Multimedia innovation of the year, as voted by numerous 
 magazines, multimedia and video trade shows, including MAC only shows, 
 was the NewTek Video Toaster. This requires an Amiga to run, even when 
 used with a MAC. So, a major trend in the MACs "growth into multi-media"
 involves selling and supporting the Amiga because it provides video 
 capabilities on the desktop for MACs. I suspect an interface to a
 PC is in the works too.

 TV and Video studios are snapping these up by the tens of thousands, and
 each one requires an Amiga. I stand by what I said about the Amiga:

 If you are really thinking long term, then think risc and motif,
 if you are thinking, say, medium term and believe in multi-media,
 the Amiga is alive and well with millions of dollars of development etc.
 
 The Video Toaster and the original video compliant Amiga were years in 
 the making and it will take the other computers some time to catch up. 
 Meanwhile, NewTek and dozens of add-on companies are moving ahead. At 
 this point, NewTek would buy the rights to the Amiga even if Commodore 
 turned out the lights. By the time "the more common environment catches up"
 we'll be into OSF & risc & ACE and the IBM/MAC merger etc.

 Dave

    
.42>    Am I the only PC supporter in this conference???
    
    Naaa...  I brought up the price advantage early on in this thread, but
    kinda laid back so that I wouldn't appear to be some sort of clone zealot.
    
    Basically, anybody that buys a computer today and thinks that he's
    still going to get the same satisfaction from it next year is silly. 
    The guys that were buying 33 mHz 386s last year are lusting after 50
    mHz 486s this year.  The boxes (all of them, without exception) are
    perishable commodities, so buy 'em cheap...  There'll be something new
    and better next year.
    

    I remember back when I bought my Amiga all the Atari ST people laughed
    at me. Well I see them all the time now when they stop by the amiga
    store trying to get a line on ST stuff. As for long term support...
    what did you get when you bought your first Mac. , and again when they
    bought out another machine. I still see Amiga 1000's running the latest
    games. because compatability has been maintained across the line. The
    old Macs are nothing much but doorstops sitting next to the famous
    IBM baby. Now I see IIGX users looking for software(you remember the
    Amiga killer don't you). No the amiga is going to stick around, and
    not one user has been discarded in the fashion of the early Mac users.
    More to the point is I was thinking of adding Music to my presentations
    so I joined this conference. Music is a common ground that has a lot
    of things that can be shared regardless of the platform you chose to
    use. I am very interested in SMPTE because it is standard across the
    industry. I want to use it to control when my music cuts in during a
    video session. Now this would allow me to add music to any video that
    has SMPTE stripped down on one of it's audio tracks. Is the Phantom
    midi interface, SMPTE device bt Dr. T's supported across all the 
    computer platforms. The midi should be compatable, and the SMPTE is a
    standard so all that is required is the software on any platform.
    	I guess the Amiga users tend to get expressive because they are used
    to dealing in multimedia as opposed to just dedicated music. So we
    actually have a collision of applications more than systems happening
    here. We forget that many people arn't into Multimedia, or multitasking
    and as such are correctly content with the system they own. We all buy
    or systems with a goal in mind, if this goal is fulfulled then we own
    the correct platform, and made a wise choice if not well...
    	I know I have never looked at any system and wished I owned that
    instead of my current choice.(oh I did help put together a 50mhz 8meg
    Toaster setup that cost a night or two of sleep) but I'm happy and if
    everyone else can say the same it's no big deal.
    								bill 

I think the reason one sees complaints about "not enough coverage" of anything
but IBM and Mac in EM (and in Byte, and in Computer Language, etcetera) is that
many people realize that perception in the marketplace dictates reality.

People "risked" millions of dollars on softwae development for the IBM PC
immediately, because of the *perception* that its "success" was a foregone
conclusion. It's "safe" to write about IBM and Mac, because it's *been* safe
to write about them, because...and so forth.

When people pick up a leading publication in any field, be it EM, Dr. Dobbs'
Journal, Computer Language, Byte, or what have you, and read a comparison of
the "leading" programs for a given application, millions of dollars of
purchasing power get based on that article. When those dollars pour in, further
development is fueled and the platform(s) on which the application runs gain
in credibility and, sometimes, installed base.

I think it's appropriate for owners of *any* computers to protest what most
respectful magazine acknowledge as "market-based" selection of articles. Yes,
they have economic grounds to print what sells, but somewhere in there is a
journalistic duty to avoid painting a distorted picture of reality, in which
only the Mac and IBM exist. It's *d*mned* annoying to see machines which are
*finally* providing (inefficient) multitasking, requiring zillions of
"compatibility checks" for a patchwork of add-on hardware, *finally* adding
color capability, etcetera, actually applauded as groundbreakers for having
achieved the immense feat of catching up with other machines in the marketplace.
Pooh-poohing anything but the market leaders does nothing for the consumer, but
does protect IBM and Mac from the natural market forces which would otherwise
drive the improvement of their products.

BTW, I have to agree that a "clone" does end up having a *lot* of advantages
in today's market, including that of readily available portable machines. I
have not considered either the Mac or IBM and its clones seriously at *all*
up to this point, largely because of the unacceptable (to me) lack of a true
multitasking OS. Despite their problems with inefficiency and compatibility,
Windows and System 7 have finally granted *technical* credibility to these
machines. While I still consider the Amiga technically superior in both
hardware and software, I expect to be picking up a notebook PC soon- and I
actually expect to be able to use it without holding my nose. (Of course, I'll
hve to make sure I get the "right" mouse, and be careful to use the "right"
MIDI interface,...sigh.)

Bob

>>With the MAC
>>and the IBM PC's growth into multi-media, there is at most a time lag between
>>innovations before the more common environment catches up. I'd reccomend
>>thinking about the long term, and that pretty much eliminates Amiga and 
>>Atari.

> Although there is some truth here, I don't think you have proved this.
    
    This is representative of the loss of context that seems to be in
    every response to my note.
    
    In my original note I was speaking SPECIFICALLY of *** RISK ***.
    
    The responses to it have not denied that there is risk of the things
    I have said.
    
    If one is speaking of "risk" one doesn't need to "prove" anything
    that has "some truth" to it.
    
    If there are Amiga or Atari users out there who don't think these risks
    are GREATER for Atari's and Amigas than they are for Macs and IBM PCs,
    well...   you're entitled to your opinion and I'm entitled to give
    mine.

    
    Gee, Dave what kind of computer do *you* own?  8^)  8^)  8^)
    
    I think we've ratholed *this* topic to death.
    
    							Brian 

    re. .46
    >  We all buy or systems with a goal in mind, if this goal is fulfulled 
    >  then we own the correct platform, and made a wise choice if not
    >  well...
    
    I must admit, that when I bought my Amiga, my goal had nothing to do
    with music.  I bought it because it technically impressed me.  Whether
    by coincidence, or design, my goals have come to mirror the Amiga's
    capabilities very closely.  For example, I knew I wanted multi-tasking. 
    When the Atari ST dealer asked my why, I didn't really know.  Now I
    know. 
    
    I've been working for the last couple of years on a personal project
    that combines live video from a camera, computer animated graphics
    executing in real-time and MIDI music with live vocals.  Sort of a
    music video created in real-time.  No software on any platform could
    support controlling the video, the MIDI and the graphics.  But, I found
    five packages which together did what I need with modest hardware
    requirements which fit a home budget.  I run all five at once on the
    Amiga and they communicate with each other (through a program called
    AREXX).  I can't imagine how you could ever put something like that
    together without multi-tasking unless you wrote the whole program from
    scratch to do exactly what you wanted.  
    
    Now, I'm a little disappointed that the Amiga has less music software
    than other platforms, specifically music teaching software and Band-in
    a Box.  I'm a little disappointed that WPerfect 4.1 is the latest
    version available on the Amiga instead of 5.1.  But I regularly do work
    on my Amiga at home and transfer it very successfully to my DECstation
    320 at work.
    
    I've probably spent more time fiddling with my Amiga than most Commusic
    noters like to spend with their computer.  Identifying and getting the
    five multi-tasking programs to do what I wanted took a lot of time and
    research.  But that time and energy fit my goals.  
    
    I guess my point is, yes you need to look at your goals before choosing
    your computer.  But sometimes, just being aware of the options can
    expand your goals.  I've used the Amiga to fulfill goals I didn't even
    have when I bought my first Amiga (or even my second).  Be open minded
    and try to really look ahead.  Then, if you choose the wrong one, you
    can always sell it and buy a different one.  
    
    This note can most definitely be called a rathole, but to Amiga users
    at least, ratholes can be so much fun.  I know I'm having fun.
    
    Terry
    

    > Gee, Dave what kind of computer do *you* own?  8^)  8^)  8^)
    
    I don't own a PC, I don't have stock in any computer company except
    DEC,... bottom line is that I have no interest at all in what anyone
    else chooses for a computer.
    
    I decided that PC-based software doesn't do enough things I can't
    already do to justify the cost.  It's sorta a product of how I work
    musically.  My situation may be a bit unusual and thus no one should
    interpret that to mean "don't buy a PC".
    
    Basically, my VFX-SD sequencer does almost everything I would ever
    really want/need to do, and it does it the WAY I prefer to do it,
    and it's packaged the way I need it to be packaged.

 I hope we are still having fun, and I especially hope Dave B. is 
 still having fun. I seems to recall he likes an occasional debate :^)

 I agree with Dave B. about risk not having to be proved.
 But there is a leap of judgement from saying 
 "risks are GREATER for Atari's and Amigas"  
 to 
 "thinking about the long term, and that pretty much 
 eliminates Amiga and Atari."  

 I too am speaking of risk and think that all current computers are at risk.
 And, if you look at the four contenders from a multi-media point of view 
 you will find the technical/price advantages of the Amiga "may" outway 
 the marketplace advantages of the MAC at least. There are only 2 or 
 3 times as many MACs as Amigas worldwide compared to what, 30x as many pcs.
 The $1600 Video toaster is putting specialized $30,000 video board makers 
 out of business faster than the way CDs put records out of business.

 Certainly, no one would  predict that the CD player would destroy the record 
 market in such a short time. The market advantage of records would seem 
 insurpassable. 

 If someone sold an Amiga or Atari compatible that ran 10x as fast as the 
 fastest PC/MAC/Amiga/Atari for $150, don't you think that a lot of people
 would buy up those $300 MAC and PC emulators and drop their expensive 
 systems in a flash?  Which former platform owner would be most at risk? 
 If someone sold a completely incompatable box that was 25 x speed of the 
 fastest of the four contenders for $150, everyone would jump ship as soon 
 as there was some emulation for one of the four contenders' current software.
 
 BTW, the last scenario is exactly why Digital is quickly backing away
 from proprietary systems and embracing open systems and standards.
 A major chip breakthrough by someone else could send our hardware business 
 into the dumper overnight. If we can't separate our software from it,
 then it goes too.

 If Casio started selling an amazing sampler/synth/sequencer at Sears for
 $200, who would care about Roland, Korg, Yamaha or the professional
 music stores?  Someone would rename this conference CLASSIC_COMMUSIC
 and devote the new COMMUSIC to the Casio keyboard and accesssories...

 Dave
 

> If Casio started selling an amazing sampler/synth/sequencer at Sears for
> $200, who would care about Roland, Korg, Yamaha or the professional
> music stores?  Someone would rename this conference CLASSIC_COMMUSIC
> and devote the new COMMUSIC to the Casio keyboard and accesssories...

Wasn't that in this week's flier?

    This winter/spring, I faced the same question - MAC or PC.  I wanted a
    computer for music, home, kids, games, etc.  
    
    	Music:  I was using an MC-500 for sequencing and librarian functions, 
                but I found it was limiting for the kind things I wanted to
    		do.  I wanted a high-end sequecer that a) had GUI interface,    
                B) had sophisticated editing capability, including realtime
     		tweaking while the music played, C) supported SMPTE and other
                sync formats, D) had an integrated Editor/Librarian, E) had
                a FUTURE with support, updates, multitasking, direct-to-disk
    		integration, etc.
    
    	Home:	It also needed to support word processing with advanced
                features (spell and grammar checker, different fonts, text
                and graphics), paint programs, terminal emulation and file 
                transfer via modem, home finance (budgets, taxes, etc.)
    		Me wife likes to write alot.
    
    	Kids:	Not only did I want educational and game software, but the
                computer needed to be easy to use for my 5 and 3 yr. olds.
                                                              
    So, I bought a Mac Classic 2/40 (2M memory, 40M hardrive) for $1200.  I
    almost went for the LC, but didn't do to budget reasons.  For sequencing,
    I got Vision along with the MIDI time Piece (MIDI interface, MIDI
    patcher, and SMPTE read/writer).  In the past 6 months, I've managed to
    collect quite an array of software (MacWrite II, MicroSoft Word,
    Mac-In-Tax, Image Studio, SuperPaint, Band-In-A-Box, Red Ryder, Stuffit, 
    and tons of games, utilites, other music and office type stuff. 
    
    The Mac Notesfile has been a tremendous help, as well as a source for
    shareware.  I work with a couple of people who also have Macs.
    
    The main reason I got the Mac was SOFTWARE.  Standard GUI interface on
    all applications and soooo easy to use.  Peaple are amazed at how my
    three year old zips around menus and windows.  Most stuff is set up as
    icons since the kids can't READ yet, but that doesn't stop them.  Point
    and Click...
    
    It would be nice to have color and a larger screen, and I see an LC
    upgrade within the next year.  
    
    As they say in the Mac Notesfile:
    
    Ask a PC owner how he likes his PC - "Oh, it's okay."
    Ask a Mac owner how he likes his Mac - "I love my Mac!"
    
    That says it all...
    
    Dave

	This has been an interesting note.  I kind of left it
	last Friday with my .9 and drove from SLC utah to Pepperell,
	MA.  Now I had to read 44 replies from hme on a VT125! 

	Anyway, some random thoughts.

	How come amiga dealers today still have the crap
	screens and stuff ontheir machines if they are trying
	to sell them?  In the past few months I've seen one dealer
	and one university bookstore (BYU) that sell Amiga.  All their
	machines looked like horse-doo doo.  The problem is the GUI
	and the fonts and what not as well as the screens.  My Mac LC,
	not a screamer, out of the box (with the now from the factory
	VRAM upgrade -- that is installed at the factory) can do
	hi res 8 bit color at the normal 640x480. It looks good
	and professional (especially with sys7).  The Amiga 2000
	and 3000 units I saw this Spring didn't.  Nor did the
	500 I saw (sure, the whiz-bang graphics program looked
	neat, but not the user interface).

	Macs support up to 6 screens in the OS.  They have sizes
	up to 21" 24 bit color.

	The video toaster thing sounds like graphics production,
	not multi-media.  Multi-media is where my program at home
	uses video, sound, graphics, and text to communicate
	with me.  Check out Apple's new QuickTime, real-time vdeo
	without hardware addiitions.  Cut and paste live video and
	sound that can be put into any document.  That is multi-media.

	Wait until October when some prices for Macs will go down.

	I want a mac notebook and the new 040 machine (both due
	in October).

	Anyway, Adoesn't pay me, I am just opiniated.
	I have used (and still have ) an Atari ST, used lots of PCs,
	and have looked at a few Amigas throughout time to
	the present.  The amiga has technologically good hardware
	(at least it was when it came out -- its usefulness
	is less now -- don't ask what I mean, I don't really
	know, except that special hadware for sprites and graphics
	objects and stuff is interesting but is it necessary?)
	
	I'd get a Mac anytime.  The system software is wonderful,
	at all levels, the user interface is great, the hardware is 
	certainly good, and the prices keep going down.  I wouldn't
	touch a PC with a ten foot pole.

	Does anyone know how many Macs are out there?  I'd expect more
	than 6 - 9 million.  Someone here claimed that there were 2 - 3 times
	more Macs than Amigas and that there were 3 mil Amigas.

	Anyway, not that this all matters.  Ignore this speach if you
	want to.  I tend to get emotional about this issue
	when I probably shouldn't, just that PCs are everywhere
	and I'm tired of fighting them (on a personal level I mean,
	I had to use them at school).

	Chad late_at_night

>Does anyone know how many Macs are out there?  I'd expect more
>	than 6 - 9 million.  Someone here claimed that there were 2 - 3 times
>	more Macs than Amigas and that there were 3 mil Amigas.

 In the US it definitely seems like there are lots of MACs around, but
 in Europe they have been much too expensive and there are 
 more Amigas and Ataris. As for the exact numbers, I could be wrong.
 The point was the comparison to PCs. Kind of like the difference in
 size between Apple and IBM as companies. Both have big name recognition 
 but the sales volume numbers show Apple (and DEC!) to be absolutely 
 dwarfed by IBM's sales volume. FWIW, there are (were?) more C=64s 
 than Macs.

 BTW, I'm hoping for a computer that incorporates the best of all the
 current computers. If the MAC had offered a color version with sound
 for $1200 three years ago, I would have bought one instead of the Amiga.
 
 Dave

 >dwarfed by IBM's sales volume. 
    
    Last year only 30% of the PC's sold were from IBM.. still a lot, tho
    
    karl

    Apple has about 10% of current personal computer sales - factoid
    recalled from a recent PCWeek. Not particularly relevant, anyway, IMO.
    
    I find the observation about "I love my Mac" very persuasive. Clowners
    (that's clone owners :) generally don't rave like those glossy-eyed
    Mac'o'fiends. I'd say that Amigas and ST owners tend to be more
    enthused, as well, but it's especially true that "Once Mac, never back."
    
    An argument that hasn't been raised, yet, and probably isn't relevant
    to the base-noter: Clones are superior machines for enhancing one's
    programming skills. I make this claim because (1) clones have the best
    development tools and (2) the OS is comparatively simple. This is
    probably less true than originally; current tools might obviate the
    need to understand the entire MacIntosh toolkit before writing a line
    of (???) Object Pascal. Nonetheless, that which makes the Mac ideal for
    novice users makes it a tremendous pain to programmers. In my old shop,
    everyone but me bought Macs, and I've probably written more actual code
    than the dozen of them put together (NOT counting hypercard doodling).
    
    On the other hand, I hear great things about Lightspeed C. And Tom
    Janzen and Jeff Lomicka seem to get lots of programming done on their
    Amiga and ST (resp.).
    
    The only two books I know on MIDI programming (both by Conger) are for
    the PC...

>>dwarfed by IBM's sales volume. 
    
>    Last year only 30% of the PC's sold were from IBM.. still a lot, tho
    
>    karl

I didn't mean IBM's sales of PCs.  I meant IBM's overall sales.
A few years back I remember the quote, DEC's total sales equals IBM's
profit. The idea is that people tend to think of IBM, DEC & Apple
as large, well known computer companies, but DEC and Apple do not fall 
neatly just behind IBM in size. And MACs don't fall neatly behind PCs in 
units sold. The number of MACs sold is much closer to the number of Amigas
sold than to the number of PCs sold.

Where is that pie chart when you need it?  :^)

>Not particularly relevant, anyway, IMO

The relevancy has to do with the risk factor of owning any computer
other than a PC.

	Actually, I seem to remember a number somewhere that Apple
	was the third (maybe fourth) largest manufacturer of
	personal or desktop computers, and with 10 % (if that is true
	as was put in here -- actually, I think it has gone
	up since the classic was released) of the market that is a lot.
	You can't really pout put Commodore at the same level as the
	Apple.

	I'd rather program for the Mac the the PC.  I only say that
	because I just finished a class where I had to put up with
	programming a PC using Turbo C.  Actually, I'd rather
	program a VAX -- there are your powerful tools. :-)

	Chad

    
    
    
    
    
    
>                                      ...Actually, I'd rather
>	program a VAX -- there are your powerful tools. :-)
    
    Now if I could just afford to take one home...
    
    
    

I tried the MAC in a Pathworks class and was very disappointed.  Some of the
simplest things that can be done on the Amiga seemed to be impossible on the MAC
such as reading documentation and shoving the screen into the background or 
pulling it down to try some of the things described in the documentation.  So, 
for me, I was GLAD to return to the Amiga.

"Thanks for your support."...Bartles and James

    Then the instructor in your Pathworks class was not very good.
    All of the things you mention are simple to do on the Mac.

    This week's InfoWorld has a letter from a former clone-owner who had
    looked up a couple years ago looking for MORE EXCITEMENT than could be
    afforded by a higher-res monitor or bigger drive for his clone. He
    bought another machine, a not-IBM-compatible! (quick in-take of breath
    registering shock and surprise). And he LOVES his machine. And it has
    REDOUBLED his enthusiasm for personal computing.
    
    These testimonials are moving. No one ever acts that way toward their
    clone, not unless they have been using "pointy-stick technology"
    (pencils, etc).

In case anyone is counting,  I vote for Macintosh.

/Mitch

 
	Well, here's my $ 0.02 worth and it probably won't be too popular
	given what's transpired up to this point, but for the benefit of
	the "vote counters":
 
	As is evident from earlier replies, this is practically an issue
	about various religions.  I personally think that in terms of
	today the Macs win in terms of being "best", etc., relevant
	to MIDI, sequencer software, etc., etc.  A bit pricey maybe, but
	the prices are coming down.
 
	HOWEVER, I am on an EXTREMELY TIGHT BUDGET (too many ne'er-do-
	well dependents, way too many) . . . the purchase of 25 360K
	floppies at bulk prices already exceeds practically my yearly
	allowance for computer tom-foolery.
 
	When I bought my personal computer, I didn't even know what
	MIDI was, just that I wanted the most bang for the buck that
	wasn't down in the category of Rat-Shack Trash 80's and Commodore
	64's and which would provide some semblance of a decent platform
	for writing programs and for which there was a wealth of "cheap
	software" available.  I got me a PC/XT clone with a 20 MByte
	Seagate disk.
 
	For me, I sure don't regret this choice at all.  I've been able
	to add, over time, all the software I envision REALLY needing
	without any danger of breaking the bank.  Little by little, over
	time, I've been able to add relatively cheaply hardware options
	like a modem, extra serial and parallel ports, an expanded memory
	card, dot-matrix printer, etc.  This system is pretty much a
	"cream-puff", about as maxxed out as you could get it starting
	with what I started with 4 years ago.  And upgrades, thanks to
	yesteryear's latest and greatest going for firesale prices, are
	within reach, for example I could upgrade to a 286/12 MHz (or better)
	motherboard now for under $ 100 . . . this would have been AT LEAST a
	$ 300 expense 2-3 years ago.  I could add another 40 MBytes of disk
	space for $ 200.  Can't afford to do either now, but month-by-
	month such becomes more and more possible.  BTW, the price
	differential between XT and AT motherboards has almost vanished,
	so if you go this route start off with at least an AT; 386SX
	motherboards are almost within reach of most of us truly
	starving musicians and would be a better choice if you can
	swing it (if you can swing a 386DX or better you shouldn't
	have read even this far).
 
	Then I got bit by MIDI (bought my daughter a Yamaha comsumer
	keyboard [PSR47] for XMAS couple years back [I do try to treat
	my kids with better toys then I allow myself]) . . . noticed
	it had MIDI capability, discovered this conference.  For more
	than a year I devoured this conference, shopped and shopped and
	shopped around, and, given my budget constraints, etc., ended
	up with Cakewalk V4.0 and a MusicQuest PC MIDI card . . . set
	me back $ 185 which was quite a hit to the purse strings but
	I couldn't find any "better deal" and, like I say, I've been
	thirsting for it for more than a year.
 
	The big "missing-link" as I see it in PC-clone land is right
	now lack of decent, inexpensive notation software.  I thought
	I HAD to have this, which is a big reason for my delay in
	getting ANY music stuff for the PC.  I'm getting by without
	notation software just fine, and having a *REAL BLAST* with
	Cakewalk and the Yamaha.  I have no doubt that someday there
	is going to be a REAL PRIMO software package for the PC that'll
	do it all, patch editing/librarian, notation, sequencing, etc.,
	etc., and it'll only cost $ 99.  And I'm not even worried about
	keeping an eagle eye out for it, I'll know when it hits the
	streets because it's going to be a REAL BIG DEAL.  If you think
	you HAVE to have notation software, you may not REALLY need it
	(now, anyways) to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish
	unless notation to midi-file and vice-versa and/or high quality
	printed scores are a BONA-FIDE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE; you should
	CAREFULLY EVALUATE any notions you have about the necessity
	of notation software if it's only one of several items on your
	shopping list . . . even here, there's some cheap choices, none
	of which are yet good enough for me to spend any of MY money
	on, like I say, it's the current "missing-link"; I'll wait for
	the $ 99 "special".
 
	You hot-shots out there I know are groaning . . . "what's this
	clown messing up our conference with this rubbish about driving
	a Yamaha PSR47 off an XT-clone for?".
 
	Well, just registering my vote.  Just voicing my opinion on the
	original topic which was more or less what to buy.  I already
	said I think the Mac is "best" to assuage many of you out there.
	Just pointing out that, without any doubt whatsoever, the PC
	turned out to be the very best choice for me, and I suggest you
	consider it if cost is truly truly a MAJOR FACTOR in your equation
	PLUS being able to do tons of non-music stuff on a real shoe-string
	budget as well.
 
	And by the why, hot-shots, take no offense, I love the conference
	and check in on an almost daily basis to see what's new.  Got
	another one for ya that'll cause some groaning and wincing:  when
	I get some bux together, probably at least a couple years off, but
	I'm looking into it now, I plan to attempt to outfit an accordion
	with MIDI . . . there are true MIDI accordions now (very pricey),
	but I think I might be able to do some sort of el cheapo retrofit
	on some old ratty "squeezebox".  I've seen MIDI accordions demo'ed
	and they are REALLY NEAT, I think, a worthwhile alternative to
	the more convential keyboard controllers . . . they offer much
	of the same stuff you would want like keyboard splits, ability
	to signal patch changes, etc., REALLY NEAT, plus most of 'em
	are in addition a traditional acoustical instrument as well while
	at the same time keeping overall size and weight on the order
	of a traditional acoustic accordion (if you want to suppress the
	acoustics while you're "electroniconing away", you merely do not
	operate the bellows . . . to go the other way is obvious, just
	turn off the electronics).  Saw one being demo'ed driving a Proteous
	(sp?) box, REALLY NEAT.  I'll let ya know how it goes, but it'll be
	awhile (there is one company out there that does MIDI accordion
	retrofits, same company Myron Floren has dealt with for many years for
	his acoustical needs [more moans and groans from out there] . . .
	I can give a pointer if anyone's interested).  Anyways . . .
 
						Bill Dickey, the cheap freak
						MIDI accordion man from
						San Jose, California
 
	P.S.  I heartily recommend, without any reservations whatsoever,
	      doing business with "Computers and Music" in San Francisco,
	      real nice folks, real nice prices.  They have ads in Key-
	      board, Electronic Musician, etc.  If ya call 'em on their
	      800 number during the week (when they're not too busy)
	      they gladly will spend plenty of time with you . . . in
	      one instance they talked me out of buying a software package
	      I had an interest in because they knew I wouldn't be happy
	      with it, and they knew they were losing the sale . . . I
	      LIKE folks like that and as a result they now have me as
	      a very satisfied and loyal customer on other stuff I've got
	      from 'em, I'm pleased if I steer any business their way.
 
	      And, my advice for first time buyers:  the sooner you buy,
	      the greater the probability of regret and disappointment.
	      Spend PLENTY of time in this conference.  Spend PLENTY of
	      time in whatever the Mac conference is and IBMPC, etc.
	      Go to the library and THOROUGHLY browse through the last
	      six months of Byte, PC Magazine, whatever the Mac equivalent
	      is, Keyboard, Electronic Musician.  From KB and EM write or
	      call any advertiser offering a catalog; call the ones with
	      800 numbers and see what they have to say to you.  Go to
	      a bunch of local dealers of this stuff (yellow pages).
	      Get ahold of that Microsoft Press book "Music Through
	      Midi" (as I recall the title, if you really care you'll
	      find reference to it elsewhere in this conference).  Take
	      your time.  The net result, if you really do this, will
	      be that eventually you will KNOW when you buy, whatever
	      it is, that it's right for you.  This MIDI stuff ain't
	      something where any one specific choice is a clear winner
	      for everyone.  (I try to do this on all my purchases over
	      $ 10 . . . more than half the time, my perceived necessity
	      of having to buy something dissipates away, thereby saving
	      me valuable dollars but giving me a free education at the
	      same time.)
    

    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
             You forgot to mollify the Amiga and Atari fans!
    
    
    
    
    
    

    PC Notation software:
    
    Laser Music Processor (~$100, but only moderately featured)
    
    (Name forgotten but I can find it) ($400, but highly featured)
    
    Burns

    Personal Composer, Burns?
    
    Spotted at the Woburn Ken Gordon show this weekend:
    
        Original IBM-PC (pre-XT!) with two 360K floppies, 512K, monochrome
        monitor... $169!
    
        Original Compaq suitcase luggable, 1 360K floppy, 10mg hard drive,
        built-in CGA-capable monochrome monitor... $300!
    
    This one is too good to be real:
    
        33mz 486, color VGA monitor (.39 dot pitch) and 16-bit VGA card,
        42mg hard drive, a 1.2 or 1.44 mg floppy, 2s/1p/1g ports, 1mg RAM,
        1 year parts/3 years labor... for $1649 (no kidding).
    
    If you're interested in the 486, call (508) 777-3923. These were
    younguns, like mid-20's, and they're probably just getting started (and
    are about to go out of business?). The flyer states that the price is for
    cash before 9/14. The same box with a 386SX is 899! Upgrades seem cheap
    too, like get a 200mg drive for another $499. 
    
    Per usual, I have no fiduciary interest in this company (except I'm
    tempted to buy a 486!).
    
    I continue to be amazed at the PC price curve. It's really an
    incredible example of the benefits of free enterprise and competition.
    If the MacIntosh ROMs were widely licensed at a reasonable price, we'd
    be looking at Mac-clones priced one-third of Apple's rates.
    
    

    
    re: .69 -  Oh, and for you "wait 'till we're all screaming on r4000's",
    high-end 486's run dead even or better with the r4000. I don't think
    all the workstations manufacturing folk had in mind less than $2000
    bucks.  It may have a real ugly instruction set, but the intel platform
    is so dominant in number of units, and the power ever increasing, that
    it will be a hard sell for any other dreams that are in the pipe!
    
    	Look at the Mac - nice stuff, but like DEC, much too high priced!
    
    bob
    

Are there any PC sequencers that run under SCO unix/open desktop? I'm starting
to see some other Dos applications that support SCO now....

dbii just a glutton for some unix_punishment....

    I gotta get involved in this one :-)  Although I am a loyal Atari user
    and officer/member of a local Atari Users group I can't recommend Atari
    over the long run.  Atari's history of US support is awful!  I would
    suggest that if you can get one real cheap Atari's are still worth it. 
    I've seen 520's in usenet for ~$250.  There is a reasonably good
    ammount of PD out there that will do the job for a while.  But don't
    shell out big bux on an Atari.
    
    JMO
    
    Joe Atari 1040 ST owner since late 1985

    re .70 and other recent postings.. MACs are NOT high priced !  With the
    downward pressure of the new boxes like Classic, it's possible to get a
    solid used MAC with a hard drive and plenty memory (and builtin graphix) 
    for .. $1K ..  
    
    Load your PC with enough memory and graphix to run a decent sequencer
    (not a character-cell one) and tell me what it costs.
    
    karl
    
    p.s. sorry to pound this again, but sometimes ya just gotta..

    But your used Mac won't even run System 7.0, Karl (not that all the new
    Macs run it all that well, from what I read). Talk about being left in
    the technological back-eddys. When Apple releases 9.0 and you're still
    running 6.01, you'll have to buy your sequencer on the used market, too.
    It's strange, how those giant Apple margins can't kick in to buy their
    installed base some ROM upgrades. Actually, maybe it's a clever strategy
    to make the installed base upgrade by buying new machines (hence the
    used market).
    
    And my prior note cited the 386SX box for $899. You can add a couple
    meg of RAM to run Windows for $92. Plenty of horse-power for music, and
    it's new, and it runs the latest version of the operating system!
    
    InfoWorld mentions that the Video Toaster will be coming to a PC-clone
    near you around Christmas.

    If you have an old Mac, and are running old system software, and an old
    application, and it all works, *who cares* what the latest thing on the
    street is?  It isn't like these things wear out with use.

    Re .74:             
    
>   InfoWorld mentions that the Video Toaster will be coming to a PC-clone
>   near you around Christmas.
    
    That's the first I'd heard that -- which issue?  Perhaps NewTek is
    offering its free-standing VideoToaster (a pre-configured Amiga 2000HD
    at about $4K) to the MS-DOS world the same way it's been offered to the
    Macintosh world.
    
    Given the L-O-N-G delay (3 YEARS!) between the Toaster's announcement
    and its actual appearance on Amiga systems, I'd be VERY skeptical of a
    new implementation of the VideoToaster board for a different hardware
    architecture anytime soon.
    
    NewTek hasn't yet produced a Toaster for the A3000, which even has the
    video slot in-line with a controller slot to make it easier to produce
    just such a board.  NewTek built the Toaster's video board a bit larger
    than the Commodore specifications (using dead space within the A2000
    cabinet that wasn't allocated to the video slot), which is why it
    doesn't fit in the A3000.  Assurances have come from both NewTek and
    Commodore that the Video Toaster and A3000 will be brought together
    sometime soon, but for the duration, the VideoToaster is selling LOTS
    of A2000 systems.

    Re .73:
    
>   re .70 and other recent postings.. MACs are NOT high priced !  With the
>   downward pressure of the new boxes like Classic, it's possible to get a
>   solid used MAC with a hard drive and plenty memory (and builtin graphix) 
>   for .. $1K ..  
    
    No fair comparing USED Macs with NEW clones!  Without dealving into the
    planned obsolescence "features" of either system, the simple fact is
    that even the new "low cost" Macintosh systems are more expensive and
    have poorer performance than current clones.  Since software pricing is
    often related to the amount the user was willing to cough up for the
    hardware, Macintosh software remains significantly more expensive than
    similar titles for other systems.  The TOTAL is what counts, anyway.
    
    I'm NOT defending clones.  As I've said elsewhere, 60 million PC users
    CAN be wrong!  For my own use, I chose the system that met both my
    esthetic and budgetary needs (and accepted that it was #3 behind the
    two "heavy hitters").  For the needs of my parish, I held my nose and
    recommended a PC clone and a specific application to run on it.
    
    For someone who is HIGHLY risk-averse and has the money, but who is
    also creative (and can use a mouse -- unlike my wife) and doesn't want
    to have to know ANYTHING about the interior of their system, I'd
    recommend a Macintosh.
    
    As this whole thread has concluded, "different strokes for different
    folks -- and so on ..."

Well, I thought for sure I'd have nothing to contribute here.  Another dream 
shattered...

>>> But your used Mac won't even run System 7.0, Karl (not that all the new
>>> Macs run it all that well, from what I read). Talk about being left in
>>> the technological back-eddys...

    Well, the price of Classics has definitely affected the price of used SEs
(since they offer similar performance).  I am able to run System 7.0 on my
SE where the only upgrade is 4 meg of memory.  It is not too slow to get `real
work done' (as my upcoming COMMUSIC IX submission will demonstrate).  In fact,
my current SCSI driver lets me break my 80meg drive into 2 paritions where I 
have System 7 on 1 and System 6.0.5 on the other.  With 3 clicks I can reboot
to the other OS if I need to.

    I would think that a used SE with 4 meg and an 80meg drive wouldn't be too 
expensive anymore.  And, you can upgrade an SE to a pretty fast SE/30 for 
less than or equal to $1000 if you ever need to.  I think used Macs are no 
more of a dead-end that any other technology.  This is familiar ground for us 
here in COMMUSIC: yes, it will get cheaper if you wait.  But, if you wait 
forever, what will you have accomplished in the meantime?

    Certainly, a 68030 or 68040-based Mac or <fill in your favorite machine
here> would be better but, just as most of us didn't start our COMMUSIC 
compulsion with a top-of-the line synth, not everyone needs to start with a 
top-of-the-line computer, either.

I just hope people buy (a) what they can afford and (b) something that makes
their life more pleasant.

- John -

    
    Re. .3
    
    >   It's strange, how those giant Apple margins can't kick in to buy
    >   their installed base some ROM upgrades.
    
    But they have Mode32 which fixes the IICX and SE/30 is available free
    from Apple. If people have paid for this for this software Apple is
    returning the money. Anyone interested can check the Maconline Notes
    File for more information and copy MODE32 from ROUTES.
    
    

    Apple does not have high margins any more.

>    Apple does not have high margins any more.

I don't think that any computer manufacturer (including DEC) has high
profit margins anymore. Mac's are slick machines, no matter what verison
you end up with (this coming from an MSDOS PC owner).

								Jens

    
    re: .81  - quality seems to have little meaning in the PC area. If
    quality counted, there would not be DOS.  Please believe me, I do
    not dispute the quality of Mac's, Amiga's, Atari over the Intel beast.
    But for whatever reason, it is the dominant platform of the desktop,
    and there are more and more quality products becoming available for it.
    
    	it's the shear volume of them out there that gives them an edge!
    
    bob

    The same can be said for U*ix, sad to say ...
    
    Steve

    > The same can be said for U*ix, sad to say ...
    
    Amen to that brother
    
    It seems that standards that evolve on there own often turn out
    to be the worst.  Unix is one of the foremost examples of it but
    there's also Beta losing to VHS, Mac/Atari/Amiga losing to IBM-PC, etc.
    
    Thank god we didn't leave MIDI to be selected by the masses.
    

    <===...thank god for midi....
    
    MIDI is a dog.....
    
    poor choice in using serial communications as opposed to parallel...
    low throughput...etc.
    
    Nothing is perfect... 
    
    Kris..

	Gee, you don't check in for a day or so and you miss all the fun.

	re: Karl's Mac -- it will too run Sys 7.  Mac plus with 2 or more meg
	is a supported configuration.

	re: cost effective PC.  In a study done by an independent firm
	(no, I can't quote the numbers or firm name, that data is in
	Utah where I just came from), the Mac was rated as more cost-
	effective than the higher priced clones (and also faster than
	comparable PCs -- at all levels -- this was with the PC running
	Windows).

	re: MIDI being a dog -- but at least it works and allows me to have
	lots of fun. It is better than most first tries at doing something.

	
	Does anybody know how many Macs are out there?  I was just wondering.

	Chad

    RE: .85
    
    I don't measure the success of a standard the way you do.
    
    I thank god for MIDI because for the most part things just work exactly
    like you'd expect them too.   I work a LOT with standards and in terms
    of "adding value" and "vendor conformance", I can't think of any
    standard that has been nearly as successful.
    
    It has absolutely caused a revolution in music.

    
>	Does anybody know how many Macs are out there?  I was just wondering.
    
    
    	3
    
    
    
                     But their owners are real vocal!
    
    				*8')
    

    re .88..
    
    thbbbbbbb....
    
    maturely yours.. karl

  I've been <macintosh> staying clear of this one too. <macintosh>.
  And will go officially <macintosh> without promoting any of the
  discussed platforms <macintosh> over the others.  <macintosh>

sublim Tom
 

	I have used all of the kinds of "boxes" described here : PC, Mac, 
	and Atari, not Amiga, (I regret it), and I personally own a Mac+.
	
	What I can say about Macs is just out of direct experience :

	- The hardware is fine. The main board is smaller than the foot 
	  print, the design is neat. It is well documented by Apple.
	  On SE, the power supply is remarkably strong and resist to 
	  surges. I have worked with PC and Macs at the country side where
	  the quality of current is poor. I was able to spare a plug on the
	  the UPS, because of this nice feature. This power supply on
	  Mac Plus, SE, Classic consumes only 60-80W which is not to be
	  neglected for a personnal use when you must pay for it.
	  Memory extension are easy to do. No setup is needed, only one
	  kind of memory used. 
	  The screen of Mac Plus, SE, Classic is said to be small by people 
	  who have never used it. It is just the size of a half of "normal" 
	  paper sheet. Do you find it small when you write ?

	- The ease of use. At home, My mac is a public unattended self-service
	  workstation. The disk has been clearly organized in folders so that
	  each one has his/her personal folder s/he can see. Even my youngest
	  nephew is able to locate the games in the "play time" folder and run
	  them on his own. Each one can do what s/he needs without disturbing
	  the other users. BTW, all applications are built on top of the ROM 
	  toolbox, so that they are "smaller" and a 20 Meg disk is small but 
	  quite useful for home computing.

	- Development. It was my primary purpose when I bought a Mac. But,
		- The Macintosh OS and toolbox are as complex and rich as, 
		  let's say VMS RTL library. The only thing I regret is that
		  it has been written in PASCAL, not in C. But for PASCAL 
		  programmers, it's all the better. 
		  And the documentation is thick..
		- As an early Mac developper, I have experienced very poor 
		  tools. Some of them however were very advanced, like 
		  MacPascal, an interpreted PASCAL supporting graphics, with 
		  a syntax sensitive editor.
		  Now there are very nice tools like THINK C, with a 
		  comfortable debugger. 
		  One of the earlier replies stated that there were only MIDI 
		  programming books for the PC. This is not correct, there are 
		  titles for the Atari, Amiga, and Mac too.
		- A lot of less common languages (for home computing), some 
		  with multitasking features exist : APL, MODULA, FORTRAN, 
		  LISP, PROLOG, SMALLTALK, OPS5, FORTH.
		  UNIX can be approached with Minix or at a real scale with 
		  A/UX. 
		  The Macs are delivered with HyperCard, which has amazing 
		  useful applications and you can also make your own *neat* one
		  in a couple of hours. (address/phone books with tone-dialing,
		  graphical databases examples already exist ...) 
		- The big BUT is that it's so much easy to use a Mac that most 
		  of the time it is being used by someone else so that I can't 
		  develop unless at night. It's not a joke, but a Mac won't 
		  stay alone for a long time ... Each one will need his/her 
		  own one.

	After all that you may still think that it's an expensive hardware,
	but isn't it worth it. Picture your life with a Mac, a PC or anything 
	else at home. It may be a paradise, or a hell, but you can choose now !	

BTW and FWIW, the notation s/w I was thinking of but could not come up with
the name of for IBM around note .70 was Music Printer Plus by Temporal Acuity
Products.

Burns

    I'd earlier cited the InfoWorld article stating that the Video Toaster
    would come to the PC around December... and someone skeptically asked
    me the issue. Well, it was the issue delivered the day before, I bet.
    THIS week's issue has a sentence in it's Cringely column (rumors, etc.
    -- not totally reliable info) suggesting that the Video Toaster for the
    PC was going to be implemented as an Amiga. I don't really know what
    that means. Put an Amiga in a PC slot?

> PC was going to be implemented as an Amiga.

That is the way  NEWTEK  sells the Video toster for tha Mac and will sell it
for the PC. The VT requires the special chips of the Amiga to work. So,
if you want a VT, you pay $1500 to put it in your Amiga; to get one for
a MAC or PC you pay ~$4000 which gets you a package that bundles an Amiga
with a VT. You then use the Amiga/VT as a peripheral to the Mac or PC.

Dave

	Not that I am espousing PCs or anything butthis might be
	interesting.

	Service Merchandise has the IBM PS/1 on sale now.

	For $388 and some pennies you get the CPU box (80286 at 10mhz),
	a monochrome VGA monitor (that says it can do 64 levels of grey -
	it looked ince), the keyboard, 512kb memory (expandable to 1 meg
	internally and 7 meg with some add on box), microsoft works,
	3 months of prodigy, and some other software.  It has a 1.44meg 3.5"
	floppy and a built in 2400 bps modem too.  It has NO normal IBM type
	expansion slots inside according to the guy there, but for
	extra $$$ you can get some expansion box that gives you expansion
	ports and room to put ore memory.  I believe it has a serial
	and one printer port too.  I don't know how much the memory
	upgrade is ut it is a special type of SIMM thing, not the
	standard.

	Sounds cheap and boring, eh?  Anyway, it could be used for
	cheap MIDI if you ise one of those serial--MIDI adapters
	for the IBM as it does have a serial port (I think).
	There are some IBM packages that support that interface.
	It comes with a word processor (as part of Micro soft works).
	It also comes with a 2 button mouse.  It has no HD but a place
	to plug one in internally.  I think an IDE type.

	Anyway, a cheap family and MIDI computer for those on a limited budget.

	Service Merchandise's normal price is $488.

	Chad

...the Macintosh LC.

After perusing these notes, reading many other Notes conferences, talking
with Mac and PC users, and talking over things with my wife, we've settled
on a Macintosh LC.  We picked it up yesterday.  The only catch is I'm
not supposed to open it until Christmas, since the kids don't know about
it yet...(I think I can, I think I can..)

Okay, why did I settle on the Mac?  First, to ease the concerns of the 
Amiga crowd, I did stop by the local Amiga store and was impressed with
the prices on startup Amiga setups.  However, once you get into a larger
systems, the price difference wasn't as great.  With what I want to do, 
the entry level systems just wouldn't do the job for me and the high end
Amiga systems were not competive enough in price, especially for what you 
get--in my opinion.  Mabye another salesperson might have swayed me more, 
but I didn't leave the store impressed that the Amiga was the machine
for me and my family.

Next, the IBM folks--and I will admit this.  There was about a week-long
period in my travels when I panicked about the price of the Mac and its
accompanying software.  So, I went PC hunting.  What I found was rather 
deceiving.  Sure, there's 386 machines out there for really cheap prices. 
You can even get some nifty color monitors to go along with them.

But, if I get a PC, I want to use Windows...like full time. That means
I need some memory.  Specifically, if I want to run products like 
DECwrite, I'm going to need 4-6 megs of memory.  I'd also like to get
a laser or inkjet printer.  

While the base PC systems were *very* competetive with the Mac prices, 
if you add extra memory and a laser or inkjet printer, you've matched 
(or are at least within a couple of hundred bucks of) the price I'm 
paying for a Mac LC, 4/40, extended keyboard, 13" color monitor, and
an Apple StyleWriter 300-dpi QuickDraw printer.

Okay, so that takes care of price.  As for usability, I've got to consider
my wife (who really doesn't like computers that much) and my 2-year-old
and 5-year-old kids.  Now, which machine is easier for them to turn on 
and start enjoying?  After my research, I think it's the Macintosh.

As for music software, that became less important as I researched software
for the family.  Now that I've turned my attention back to my music
needs, I see some very low-cost entry level packages to get me going,
especially since so far I haven't used MIDI at all yet.

I can pick up an Opcode Midi Translator (3 MIDI outs) for $59 retail
and Passport's TRAX (the entry level version of Master Tracks Pro) for
$79.  That will get me going.  Then for another $250 or so I can pick
up a set of games for the kids (and Carmen for my wife), Talking Moose
for a goof, and MacWrite II.

I'm sold and I'm happy.  Thanks for all the input.  I was glad to be
the one to get this rather emotional arument started.  I learned a lot--
hope others did, too.

Peter (a new Mac owner, who's going to try not to open the box until
Xmas morning...wish me luck..)

    Ya know, Peter, we have an LC for our office here.. I was the one that
    set it up.  From first taking knife to package and seeing the first
    screen was under 10 minutes.
    
    ;-)
    
    karl

10 minutes, huh?  But the question is, how long will it take to get it 
*back* in the box so it looks like it was never opened!

Geez, the real test is tonight.  Sheryl goes to work and leaves me alone
in the house with the boxes....

I'm sweatin' already,

Peter

    
    
    
                        10 minutes to ectasy?????
    
    

    I hate to continue stuff, but I didn't get in on the first part...
    
    That's why the Amiga won't ever do well.  Because they don't have
    salespeople.  It's sad, but politics will always win over academia, in
    these United States.
    
    Being the hacker/programmer/user I am, I had to get the Amiga, simply
    because of it's abilities.  Programming it is closer to a mainframe
    than any other computer.
    
    Actually, I find it sad that Mac and IBM need "salespeople" (ie liars;
    I know, I've been one) to show their products.  I'd like to see a store
    honestly compare hardware and software features, IBM, Mac, Amiga, side
    by side...but then, people might actually *buy* Amigas.
    
    Flame, respectably, off.
    
    Mike

    
    Maybe the Amiga is like some of the non-mainstream political parties:
    they've (it's) got good ideas; they just lack the necessary horsepower
    to compete against the establishment.  Even though they don't ever come
    close to winning, though, they have an effect on the shape of the main
    stream of thought which is directly proportional to the strength of
    their following.
    
    With the VLC, though, I'm ready to toss my Intel-based hardware, and
    klugey (can you say Unrecoverable Application Error?) Windows 3 and
    write the stuff I really need and make do without the rest until I can
    get it for cheap...  I'm a computer professional, I'm tired of going
    home to crappy little toy computers that run out of memory and crash
    the whole system on the slightest glitch.
    
    Whew!  I didn't realize that was in there!  I feel much better now.  I
    guess I've just been a closet VAX bigot all of this time...
    

re Amiga

	Well, it does have the horsepower - just not the marketing bs 
in the US.  In europe its a very different story, it outsells macs and 
just about everything else except big bloo(per) to which its a VERY
close second.  It outperforms the mac when emulating a mac  - -  via
AmaxII. 
I just don't understand what all the hype is about (messy dos) 
windows, we've had real ones since day one.   Also, it multi-tasks,
make that  REAL MULTI TASKS !   I just can't imagine having a machine 
tied up with (for example) downloading and not being able to do 
ANYTHING ELSE at the same time.
Maybe thats what I like about it, its able to enjoy a (smaller) 
success WITHOUT all the b.s.  

	Reg

    Yeah, Reg.
    
    And you System 7 or Windows 3 people don't give me that "I can
    multitask, too."  
    
    My 500 at 7 Mhz can blow away a 25 Mhz 386 when running 4 programs at
    the same time.
    
    We'll get 'em yet, Reg (and Len, who for political reasons seems to
    have stayed out of this fray)!
    
    Mike

re                       <<< Note 2703.104 by JAYMES::BELL >>>
>                          -< Run circles around 'em >-

	Ya know what I like to do, just for grins  ??

	Run the GVP memory test, two or three copies in different 
windows and watch 'em compete for the next largest available chunk of 
contiguous memory,  while...

	running the hard disk bad block re-map in another window, 
while...

	down-loading the latest fred fish offerings, say 547 is 
coming, while...

	(de)lharc'ing previous files, say 546, while...

	trying out the stuff that I unpacked from, say 545, while...

	deleting the stuff I don't want to keep and 
filing/organizing/archiving stuff to be stored, or putting new
everyday stuff into workbench start-up, say from 544....

	Unfortunately I can't play any midi stuff while the modem is 
hooked up, or I would - I can only use the Amiga's own stereo output 
for playing MED or octa-MED tunes, it ain't perfect  (-:

	R

PS  not that I need to run the diagnostics, it ain't broke...

    Sorry to appear to be a religious bigot, but .97's reasoning about
    price just doesn't cut it. Allegedly, the price of a 386 approached
    that of an LC when you added memory and a laser printer.
    
    First, a 386 is (I think) more machine than a LC. Second, you need lots
    of memory for the LC, too; System 7 takes 2 meg to load, 4 meg to run
    more than one app, and 6 or 8 to really operate... and PC memory is
    MUCH less expensive than Mac memory. You can buy 4-meg SIMMs for the PC
    for about $155. Third, .97 compared the Apple QuickWriter (?maybe?) to
    a _laser_ printer. PC-compatible laser printers _are_ available in the
    $6xx range, and the equivalent to the 300 dpi Apple printer can be had
    for $300 (e.g. the Canon bubblejet, probably).
    
    Just to make the price differential point again: A couple Saturday's
    ago at the trade show in Woburn, a Medford vendor was selling the
    following system:
    
        486 CPU at 33mz with 64K cache
        4 meg RAM expandable to 32 meg on the motherboard, 5 open slots
        105 meg 14ms hard drive
        Multisync monitor with 1 meg VGA card - 256 colors at 1028x768
        2 serial / 1 parallel / 1 game port
        Keyboard
    
    for $1695!! This machine is an order of magnitude faster than the LC,
    with twice the memory, 2.5 times the disk space, superior screen
    resolution, and MUCH more expandability. I bet the LC cost _more_!
    
    The Mac is more fun, cuter, easier to learn and operate. It is WAY more
    expensive. And from what I read in MACINTOSH, System 7 and inits etc.
    make Mac crashes about as commonplace as MSWindows users' experience.
    
    - Hoyt (future Mac owner, by the way)

	Uhh, Mac memory is usually cheaper than the quivalent PC memory 
	everywhere I've ever checked.  That is because Mac simms use
	only 8 chips and not nine. My brother said that he saw
	4 meg simms for mac at $140-$150.  He heard of them
	at $120.

	Chad

	OK,  here we go again...... JFF  {just for fun}

	The 1meg by 8 SIMMS on my Amiga are ~$40 and they're 1meg by 9 
with one chip missing - REALLY !   They seem to cost about the same, 
probably because the volume in 9 bit land makes up for the trivial 
cost of the extra chip.  The sockets they go into are THE SAME AS the 
PC sockets, there's just no etch on the card at that end.

	The lowest Amiga relevant price I know of on 4meg by 8 SIMMS 
is $550 for 16meg, its a special factory direct deal from progressive 
peripherals if you buy their '040 accelerator card (and wouldn't I 
just LUV one ?).  So, that comes out to what ?  $137.50 each or 
something under $35 per meg  - -  so its cheaper the more you buy, no 
surprise there.

	Printers ?   Look under the hood, there are a very few
manufacturers and a lot of label engineering companies.  It is what it
is and if you know what that is and know how to shop it doesn't matter
a damn which platform its going on.  They're cheap and getting 
cheaper, but I still pack files at home and bring them to work for 
laser printing, even the HP 500c at ~$800 is too expensive for ME !


	Reg

    I'm unaware of any MAC application professional software that REQUIRES
    System 7 to run.  On a MAC Plus with 2.5MB of memory, Performer WITH a
    fairly large (20+trax, 7 minutes long) piece loaded into memory takes.. 
    1.1MB.
    
    karl, running 6.something (you know, the compact one)

    Great, so you get to operate an orphan system, which shortly WILL be
    unable to run current applications. Is my mind not working (serious
    question), or is it true that System 7 includes integral MIDI-related
    functionality? And that System 7 is the first multitasking Mac OS?
    These seem like the kinds of things that a MIDIholic would want to take
    advantage of.
    
    RE Mac SIMMs: I guess I was confused by the pricing for memory for the
    new Powerbook notebooks from Apple/Sony. These are unique, more-or-less
    only available from Apple (for the present), and are priced out of
    sight. I should check my facts first, but I think we're talking several
    hundred dollars per megabyte. And the recent MacUsers (or MacOtherMag)
    review specified that they ran their tests using 4 (!) meg machines, at
    Apple's instruction, because 2 meg was just sufficient to get System 7
    up.

    From the Mac conference: Powerbook memory price quotes run from
    $164/meg (from a real vendor offering Digital employees a hefty
    discount) to $120 (no vendor named). The Powerbooks will ONLY run
    System 7, BTW.

   <<< Note 2703.111 by PENUTS::HNELSON "Hoyt 275-3407 C/RDB/SQL/X/Motif" >>>
                         -< spare me your spare me's >-
    
    Well, Hoyt, I find it a bit specious to bang the MAC environment because 
    of alleged high memory usage and prices for a version of the OS that NO
    professional application developers require.  System 7 MAY be the Next
    Thing (sorry) in the MAC world, but until Digidesign and Mark Of The
    Unicorn and OPCODE, et al. MAKE me upgrade to it, I won't.
    
    Remember we're talking about systems to run MUSIC applications here.
    
    karl

    If you want to run MUSIC applications on a Powerbook, then you will run
    System 7 in at least 4 meg, at $120+ per meg.
    
    Memory prices ARE a specious (good word!) objection for non-Powerbooks.
    That leaves the LC's slow CPU, small disk, scarce slots, and low-res
    screen.

    Hoyt, name ONE professional music application for the MAC whose company 
    has publicly stated that they are 
    
    a) moving to System 7 AT ALL (I'm willing to be educated)
    b) FREEZING development on MAC/OS v6.x variants.
    
    Also : 
   >That leaves the LC's slow CPU, 
    Unless I intend to do Fast Fourier Transforms on digital samples, so
    what ?  Even the most fully-featured SEQUENCER applications (remember 
    the topic?) runs fine on a 68000.  You know, like a Classic.
    
    >small disk, 
    Oh.  I guess Apple's SCSI doesn't work, then.  The things I learn
    here..
    
    >scarce slots, 
    Even the top of the line DigiDesign sampler card only takes ONE, and 
    that works with their own sample editing package, VISION, and now Digital
    PERFORMER.  My MIDI output is the RS422 port on the back.  No slots
    required.
    
    >and low-res screen.
    I didn't realize we were doing hi-level CAD-CAM work here.  Your music
    needs must far exceed mine.
    karl

    Wow, a "my <insert vendor name 1> pc can beat your <insert vendor name 2>
    pc" fight.  I sure am glad somebody remembered how to do this...
    
    len (obsolete Amiga 1000 owner).
    

    Is it really beyond your imagination, Karl, to think that the System 7
    features to support music are irrelevant? Multitasking doesn't help?
    That a musician might not see the advantage in owing a six pound
    machine that runs on batteries? I think I'm talking about music.
    
    And I joined this conversation when someone made the comment that an
    LC was price-equivalent to a DOS box, once memory and the printer was
    figured in. Normally I let these religious issues go by, but there was
    a factual matter here: the LC and the same-price-or-cheaper 486 box are
    hardly equivalent, in terms of the CPU, hard-disk, and display.
    
    If you really care to pursue the argument that you don't NEED all that
    hardware power, then the price differential can be stated another way: 
    you can buy a same CPU speed, same disk capacity, similar resolution
    DOS machine for about $700. Naturally, your rejoinder is that you can
    buy a Mac for $700, if you'll accept a used 512e. You can buy a _new_
    monochrome 20-meg 8088 box for about $300, used for $100 (literally).
    
    The larger point is that you can bet (and I'll cheerfully bet if you're
    so disposed) that Performer etc. will be taking advantage of System 7
    features. It will be some time before System 6 is UNsupported, i.e. the
    stuff won't work anymore. A similar schism is appearing in the DOS
    world, where 386/486-specific software is just now becoming commonplace.
    
    I hope I don't appear to be frothing at the mouth about this. I admit
    to being mystified by your vehemence, Karl, unless it's the usual
    shining-eyes-I-love-my-Mac phenomenon, which in MY opinion is the main
    reason for buying a Mac (people _love_ it!). I write these comments as
    someone reading a how-to-program-a-Mac book, who is looking through the
    Macintosh notes conference and reading the MacMags to figure out what I
    should buy for a development machine. I don't have any stake in one
    machine being "better" than the other. It happens to be a simple fact
    that the Mac buggers are _expensive_! This isn't controversial, IMO!
    
    If you want to feel otherwise, it's a free country. - Hoyt

    .. or maybe I just have to have the last word.. ;-)
    
    karl, looking for ANY flavor of windows on that 'bargain' 8088 for $100

    re .115, I'm a Mac person, myself, but even I know that Amiga 1000
    owners are never obsolete.  
    
    Eirikur
    

    
    So len, I guess I'm just not burned out on the whole "bash each other
    over the head with your <insert favorite vendor> pc" game.  ;-)
    
    And you missed out on the power-up deal?  Tsk tsk. 
    
    -=mikie=-
    
    (I did too; too many D4's to buy)

	Sorry Hoyt, but I have to comment.

	You changed the discussion from a Mac (pretty generic) to a PowerBook,
	when talking about memory.  You said Mac memory was expensive,
	which is not so (cheaper actually by a few/couple dollars / meg),
	and then quoted powerbook prices to justify.  Any size (for the
	most part) SCSI disk will plug right into the LC, the
	original comparison system, any size, also 1 gigabyte systems.
	I can run the standard 640x480 color monitor in 8 bit depth
	on my LC (I do).  that is not low res.  There are also (back to disks
	here), 105 MB and other larger drives that can be swapped in for the
	internal drive.  Things that you need a slot for
	on the PC aren't needed on a Mac.  My 1 LC sot is still empty.
	I do hope to put the 40mhz 030 and FPU card from
	Daystart in (at around $1000) that slot.  I also want to put
	a SCSI 19" monitor on my machine and run two screens (built
	in OS support for up to 6 screens).

	Also, the mac has multitasked for several years.  System 7 only
	changed it so that multitasking is always on instead of acording
	to the user's wish.  With the Midi manager and Mac MIDI software
	you can (and have been able to for a long while) have several
	MIDI applications running at once and talking together.  I have
	done this! (I also did it on a plus which I will
	admit was kind of slow for multiple MIDI things to be running
	at once).

	I would rather have an LC than any 486 machine.  PCs are not
	fun and enjoyable to use (or to program, everyone behaves a little
	differently :-).

	Chad  LC_owner_(10_mb)_with_>_100MB_worth_of_HD_and_8_bit_hi_res_
	screen

    Boy, communication is difficult! Have I gone stupid, due to excessive
    DOS partisanship? This conversation DOES remind me of the sort of
    talking past each other you expect from across the aisle of the U.S.
    Congress.

>You changed the discussion from a Mac (pretty generic) to a PowerBook,
>when talking about memory.  You said Mac memory was expensive,
>which is not so (cheaper actually by a few/couple dollars / meg),
>and then quoted powerbook prices to justify.  

    Agreed: memory is NOT more expensive for the Mac. I thought I'd admitted
    my mistake before. Sorry! I was wrong! The price for the Powerbook 
    memory is outrageous, but then so is the price of memory for a Toshiba
    (DOS) notebook.

>Any size (for the most part) SCSI disk will plug right into the LC, the
>original comparison system, any size, also 1 gigabyte systems. 

    Yes, but I was talking about what you can buy for $1700! Someone
    said an LC was a better deal than a DOS machine! For $1700 I get
    2.5 times as much disk and tons of other advantages. The fact that
    SCSI lets you add onto the Mac is irrelevant. SCSI lets me add onto
    the DOS machine too. So what?

>I can run the standard 640x480 color monitor in 8 bit depth
>on my LC (I do).  that is not low res.  

    In the DOS world that's relatively low res. My $1700 DOS machine is 
    1028x768.

>There are also (back to disks here), 105 MB and other larger drives that 
>can beswapped in for the internal drive. 

    Swappability is as irrelevant as SCSIability.

>Things that you need a slot for on the PC aren't needed on a Mac.  
>My 1 LC sot is still empty.

    Uh huh. So your MIDI connection is an external box. There is no
    equivalent (so far as I know) to Sound Blaster etc. Karl points
    out that some music-related board takes up only one slot. That's
    probably because if it took up two, it would eliminate a great 
    deal of the Mac installed base! Ethernet card? Modem? NTSC? Scanner?
    Robotic controllers? Real-time data collection boards? Video 
    frame-grabbers? Etc. Etc. Etc. DOS users know slots are valuable!

    I don't know if these things are available on the Mac. Can you SCSI
    these things together? I was stunned to learn that you can do
    SCSI to video on Macs! Amazing what contortions are required when 
    you don't have enough slots. You just get this trail of stuff
    hanging out the back end, not that handy when you want to pack up
    and take it on the road (music, right?!).

    In my opinion, the slots issue is simply Apple attempting market
    segmentation. What's it cost to add a slot? Ten bucks? Can you spell 
    c-r-i-p-p-l-e?

>I do hope to put the 40mhz 030 and FPU card from Daystart in (at around 
>$1000) that slot.  

    And then you'll have something like the performance offered by the
    486, and be out of slots and out an additional $1000 over the price of
    the 486 (which has it's FPU built in). 

>I also want to put a SCSI 19" monitor on my machine and run two screens 
>(built in OS support for up to 6 screens).

    And Mac third-party products are ALSO much more expensive than the
    DOS counterparts. Economies of scale, maybe, or maybe Mac owners are
    just used to paying more. ;^)

>Also, the mac has multitasked for several years.  System 7 only
>changed it so that multitasking is always on instead of acording
>to the user's wish.  With the Midi manager and Mac MIDI software
>you can (and have been able to for a long while) have several
>MIDI applications running at once and talking together.  I have
>done this! (I also did it on a plus which I will
>admit was kind of slow for multiple MIDI things to be running
>at once).

    You mean the big innovation of System 7 was elimination of a 
    dialog box where you clicked the "turn multitasking on" button?
    Hard to believe. What's the big fuss about?

>I would rather have an LC than any 486 machine.  PCs are not
>fun and enjoyable to use (or to program, everyone behaves a little
>differently :-).

    I have no argument with this at all. The gleaming-eyes responses
    to this string are an unanswerable endorsement of this phenomenon.
    I'm not making light: it's real. The Mac is a delight, apparently.
    I look forward to being delighted (at great expense).

    This will be my last comment on this topic (big sigh of relief heard
    all around). Karl can respond one more time, and we can move on.

    Suppose you were a gigging musician and wanted to run a sequencer 
    using a notebook computer. You could select from 1 of three Mac
    models, or the DOS equivalent (in terms of CPU power, disks, etc., 
    NOT an equal UI) from any of several hundred vendors (competition!):

        Powerbook                    DOS
        ---------                    ----------
        100 for $2300                Toshiba T1000XE (8086) for $800
        140 for $3000                Sharp 6220 (286) for $888
        170 for $4400                AST (25mz AMD 386) for $2600

    Why would anyone buy a Powerbook?

    Well, because the like Mac better! Because the Mac UI is easier to
    use and the Mac has better software (maybe). Because they own a
    desktop Mac and don't want to learn DOS. LOTS of reasons. If you're
    a Mac user, and you pay yourself any significant amount of money per
    unit of time learning to run the machine, then the Powerbook is 
    probably a bargain. The same rationale may well apply to a novice
    computer user: at $10/hour, you're ahead with the Mac after the first
    couple hundred hours. This may be true! The wonderful Mac UI apparently
    _does_ justify the expense, because Apple keeps selling them.

    They are EXPENSIVE, however. Enuf said.

    - Hoyt

I currently share a cubie with another person, who's considering buying a home
computer; he sought my advice. My advice was to make his *own* choice, realizing
that each of us applies different weighting factors to the several factors
involved in selecting from the available machines. I did give him my own
opinions, clearly labeled as such, as to the factors which divide the available
choices and how each "measures up."

I won't list all of the above, but they include not only base prices and
standard functionality (and expandability), but nebulous categories such as
market perception and guesstimates as to future directions of a given platform.
Once you have a machine, you become intimately familiar with its specific
shortcomings as well as its strengths (from your *own* point of view). I have an
Amiga, which I continue to regard as the "right" choice for me, but it's not
necessarily the best choice for others- depends on what they want/need, and how
well *they* feel a given machine meets said requirements.

Cheaper? Faster? Better? More software available? Better software available?
Expandable? Better OS? Hardly an apple-to-apple comparison amongst them, IMHO.
Best contribution we could make here would be a substantial (read: nontrivial
to develop) decision matrix for making a selection, with explicit pointers as to
"where be monsters"  as regards differences of opinion on a given machine's
merits.

Don't mean to distract from the brouhaha- it seemed to have pretty much
petered out anyway. (BTW, no, *I* don't want to be the one to assemble the
"Computer Selection Guide!")

Enjoy-
	Bob

	First, Chad wrote the long reply, Karl didn't.

	Slots are more than $10 (at least Nubus and the like).

	Modems plug into the serial port (standard x 2), the mouse
	plugs into the ADB port, disks into the SCSI port, and
	audio into the Audio in and out ports, all built in,
	requiring no cards (all things where PC users need cards).
	Scanner plugs into SCSI, a lot of other things plug into
	SCSI (PC scsi boards are $$$ unless you get the 8 bit version).
	SCSI is virtual slots.

	MOst users don't put every conceivable device on their machines, 
	hence the need for slots is not there.  If a user needs all the slots
	to put frame grabbers, scanners, NTSC sync, and the like
	there are Macs with up to 6 slots available.

	Slots are expensive because the case needs to be bigger,
	the power supply and heat getting rid capability increased,
	etc and if you don't need the slots for the average user you
	don't need to build a machine with them.  The average joe doesn't
	need them on a Mac.  The average PC user only needs them to
	bring his machine up to the level of a basic Mac.

	You can buy a LC from a third partyu with a 105 MB disk built in.  
	It doesn't cost a lot more.

	I will not claim the LC is the end all Mac.  I'd rather have an si, 
	ci, or Quadra.

	Powerbook 170 will soon be less, all new machines/products start
	at list.  I for one will be taking 2 months off to take
	one last University class and will get a 170 for about $33-3500,
	which will probably be close to what a normal price
	will soon be.

	With the Mac you can work, with the PC youcan brag how
	cheap it was :-)

	Chad

    What would you do if you want to use your computer for other home
    applications besides music, and make available for other family members 
    (small children included), and want something that will be around and
    supported for years to come?
    
    As time goes by, I'm leaning more towards a MAC.  This Apple-IBM
    alliance will go a long way towards weeding out the "desktop wanna 
    be's" too.
    
    Mike

    
    Many people realise the real implications of the IBM-Apple alliance. 
    Through their business sales techniques and advertising, they are
    creating another Ma Bell.

    Take it where ?
    
    karl, who knows and loathes DOS perfectly well, thank you, and
    considers Windows 3.0 to be like chroming a dump truck.

re                <<< Note 2703.125 by DESERT::HEISER "lovespeak" >>>
>                               -< other factors >-

>    What would you do if you want to use your computer for other home
>    applications besides music, and make available for other family members 
>    (small children included), and want something that will be around and
>    supported for years to come?
    
>    As time goes by, I'm leaning more towards a MAC.  This Apple-IBM
>    alliance will go a long way towards weeding out the "desktop wanna 
>    be's" too.

	I was all done, but since you brought this up.....

	again, I'd go with the Amiga   ...and I do, and I have mid 
sized off-spring, etc.   Its at least as  "family friendly"  as the 
other brands and there is some additional benefit to them being 
exposed to  "platforms other than those used at school".  For this 
reason I could (did) consider an Atari.  There is also this cute thing 
about number three having to emulate numbers one and two, so its 
difficult to REALLY believe that you would get caught on the wrong 
platform if/when the music stops.  I don't see Commodore fading from
the face of the earth RSN;  by the time they do perhaps everything
will be Motif (or "something else that makes the underlying hardware
platform irrelevant") based.  At that point I suppose the best deals
will be available where the competition is toughest {Intel based
you_know_what_look_alikes}, but aren't those the come and go companies
that bleed from throat wounds ? 

	Reg

PS	I'm not supposed to say what a super games machine the Amiga 
	is, right ?  (-: 

    Reg, no no no no no, you're supposed to mention that the Amiga is the
    only computer to do 24 bit raytracing for $1200.  The next computer up
    would cost you at LEAST $10,000 and that isn't half as user friendly.
    
    Mike

re                       <<< Note 2703.129 by JAYMES::BELL >>>
>                           -< Remember the Juggler? >-

	Yes, also some latter day take offs on it  {not PC crowd
compatible (pun)}. 

>    Reg, no no no no no, you're supposed to mention that the Amiga is the
>    only computer to do 24 bit raytracing for $1200.  The next computer up
>    would cost you at LEAST $10,000 and that isn't half as user friendly.

	OK, I'll take that one if you'll tell 'em about how it can be 
packaged as a video peripheral to their platform of choice for $4K and
they don't even have to admit there's an Amiga in there   (-: 

	Reg

PS	I saw some  "toaster porn"  a couple of months ago;  the basic
	material was totally without merit, but the processing had
	REALLY added some artistic content - redeeming value even. 

>the face of the earth RSN;  by the time they do perhaps everything
>will be Motif (or "something else that makes the underlying hardware
>platform irrelevant") based.  At that point I suppose the best deals
    
    I haven't verified it yet, but I've been told MAC's already have Motif
    support.
    
    Mike

    Newtek really p*sses me off by covering up the dang label.

re                <<< Note 2703.131 by DESERT::HEISER "lovespeak" >>>
>                                   -< fwiw >-

>>the face of the earth RSN;  by the time they do perhaps everything
>>will be Motif (or "something else that makes the underlying hardware
>>platform irrelevant") based.  At that point I suppose the best deals

	Oops, poor wording, maybe I should have said, "everything else 
as well" ?  No, thats worse.  
    
>    I haven't verified it yet, but I've been told MAC's already have Motif
>    support.


	Methinks there is an Amiga 3000 in this very building that has 
been doing it for quite a while now.  Ether-net card hooked to the 
net, etc., it even runs dec-write.

	R