Re: What's so Great About the IIGS?

[John_L._Graham@adbbs.antioch.edu (John L. Graham)]

Well, I guess greatness is in the eye of the beholder :)

I use Macs and PCs and Apple IIs (and HPs, and...) at work so i like to think
I'm well-rounded. I like my IIGSs 'cause they coninue to be a jack of all
trades (and master of none I guess). On basically the same platform I keep
lab notes and QA/QC records, write programs to solve some really nasty
problems (like; what's the volume-averaged radiant intensity inside a
photothermal reactor given the lamp geometry, configuration, and shape of the
vessel?), keep track of my contracts, and run a variety of research tools
includng gas chromatographs, analyzers of various types, laser systems,
spectrophotometers. Nearly all of our experimental systems run off of IIes or
GS's. We even used II+'s at one time but GS's have become so plentiful most
have been retired to storage, but they come they still come in handy the the
one we recently reactivated to keep track of the temperature and humidity in
one of our optics labs. At hoem we use this same computer to track the Moon
and Stars (sounds poetic, but true, I wrote the software that does it) and
tell us when to take the kids in the back yard to watch the space shuttle or
the Mir space station fly overhead. We play games on it, paint on it, make
greating cards on it (the kids still look forward to coloring the Christmas
cards every year), play music on it (the 'family' GS has a MIDI keyboard on
it), look stuff up on it (my son needed to know the highest point in
Virginia, we found it using DiscQuest Encyclopedia), even tinker around the
Internet on it (I'm here aren't I?). I still do a lot of programming on it
(that's what got me started some 16 years ago and I still enjoy it) and of
course the usual balance the books and keep track of video tapes and
what-not.

If I were starting over from scratch would I buy a GS? To be honest, probably
not. We just bought a 4/0 Mac Plus (which I'm building up to a 4/60 Plus) and
I'm finding the joys of trying to find software for a computer who's day has
come'n gone. Thank goodness for user groups! But as it is I've been
accumulating stuff for many many years, stuf that's _paid_ for!!! I gotta
enough stuff to keep me happy for ages. Our family has considered buying
something new (we've been eying some multimedia PCs) but given what it would
cost, and given what we _already_ have there are so many things we can do for
our family with what the capital cost and care and feeding costs would be.
Plus, the rate at which computers change continues at break-neck speed, the
longer we wait, the better off we'll be. In the mean-time, the GS is a known
quantity. What you see is what you get and nothing's coming along that will
make it obsolete next week. Sooo, if you buy a system try to get one that
already has most of the commercial software you want (and that's hard to come
by), get a subscription to Shareware Solutions II, catalogs from Adrian
Vance, Alltech, and others, join a user group, and hang out in CSA2.

Have fun!

John