Re: Need advice

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <01bc56b2$e40a9f00$LocalHost@default>,
Tim in Town <timf@rmi.net> wrote:
>I've just unpacked my GS after several years and am now wanting to use it
>to browse the Internet and research/write papers for college.  I've been
>reading the various FAQs and posts for a few weeks, but I'm overwhelmed by
>the "technicalease."  Can anyone give me straightforward suggestions on how
>to upgrade my GS and where to get the upgrades.

   I'd recommend upgrading your GS in this order: memory, hard disk,
accelerator. Go to at least 2MB ram (4MB preferable)-- the csa2 FAQ in
section 10.2 lists many vendors who sell ram cards-- Alltech
Electronics and Sequential Systems both sell new cards. Those two are
also good for Hard drives-- Alltech's line of focus internal drives,
and Sequential's SCSI card allowing you to connect external SCSI drives.


>I'm also curious about the GNO/ME platform and what pluses/minuses it has
>over the native GS/OS environment.

   It runs on top of GS/OS, and lets you run desktop programs (well,
one at a time) under it. In short, a lot of plusses, almost no minuses.

>I've been using a PC (Pentium 166 w/33.6 modem, Win95) to browse, and am
>wondering how a "super-GS" would compare.

   Do the math, a P166 is going to have faster processor speed, disk
i/o, graphics display, etc. Except for games (which are currently on
some of the leading edges of PC technologies except for server and
graphical render farm boxes), PC software does tend to be more bloated
and can be slower, but a P166 moves electrons mighty fast.

>  Also, I've read about Spectrum's
>browser and understand that there is another browser available under
>GNO/ME.  Has anyone compared these two?  Is the GNO/ME browser similar to
>Internet Explorer?

   If you read the FAQs more carefully, GNO/ME's browser is not out.
And if you're expecting fancy graphics and sounds out of your web
pages (i.e. mostly fluff), rather than information content, PC based
web browsers are going to be be faster and power powerful, especially
in the graphical display arena.

>Basically, what I'm asking is this:
>  Can the readers of this group give me some advice as to whether I should
>upgrade the GS or just buy a new system?  (I really enjoyed my GS when I
>used it 8 years ago in college.  Now that I'm addicted to "net surfing" I'd
>like to use the GS rather than spend money on a new system.  But I don't
>think its feasible to let sentimentality limit my choices.)

   You have a P166 and you want a "new system"? Sheesh. That's a very
nice processor currently available (MMX gives maybe a 10% speed boost,
that's it, unless you're in to running 'cutting edge' games, and if
so, I'd recommend a 3dfx based 3D accerator for more improvement than
MMX can do), and if the rest of your system is similarly nice, there's
no point in upgrading it for simply "net surfing." Any GS web browser
is going to do just fine at displaying text on web pages; if you're
into viewing web pages for the pretty pictures, Java or Active-blech,
it's not going to be that great.

   Any web designer with a clue about content providing will make sure
that viewing web pages without pictures will still provide the
information, and that the pages load quickly over a slow
link. However, in the "instant gratification" TV generation thinking
that flash and style is more important than content, that's not going
to happen anytime soon.

   Bottom line: Apple IIs do text web surfing fine. And you shouldn't
need a newer system than P166 to do multi-megabyte-media stuff. A P90
on my desk at home does a more than adequate job with Netscrape; maybe
you should consider dumping Internet Exploder.

Nathan Mates

--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein