Re: Reasons to buy a IIgs???

[dalloff@freenet.columbus.oh.us (Dave Althoff)]

Daniel A. Cook (gt2943a@prism.gatech.edu) wrote:


: Hi!

: 	I am trying ot convince myself to buy a IIgs off someone.  I have
: decided that I haven't played that quality of game since I traded it for
: my first Mac.  Are there any really cool uses for a GS nowadays?  Could it
: be set up as a terminal for a unix machine in the same room?  Help me out
: here...

So long as you can talk to the UNIX box via an RS-232 port, the IIgs would
make a *great* VT-100 terminal.  Interested in hardware hacking?  I don't
think any more hacker-friendly hardware platform was ever mass-produced
than the Apple ][.  And then there are the basic computer uses, what many
computer users use computers for--

Word processing
Database management
Spreadsheet calculations/personal or corporate finance
Telecommunications, including World Wide Web (but without the fancy graphics)

Furthermore, the IIgs has awesome sound capabilities, and easy support for
MIDI.  

I've found thatmy IIgs can handle most of my computing needs much more
cheaply than any other platform, and in some cases, with greater
speed...and almost always with greater reliability.

What CAN'T the stock IIgs do?
o Due to its slow speed (by todays standards), some operations are slower
than on other computers.  In many cases, though, the slowness is offset by
the fact that IIgs programmers are more efficient than 80n86 and 680n0
programmers.

o The graphics are somewhat limited.  Most of the graphics you find out on
the 'Web don't look very nice even at 320x200x3200.

o Most of the horribly complicated hard-to-play games now being produced
with the fancy graphics and CD-ROM platform won't work.  But, on the other
hand, all those highly playable classics will.

In my case, my computers are my IIgs, and a pair of ][e's; I also have
access at home to another ][e and a Lisa 2/5.  But at work I can surf the
'Net on a Sun SPARCstation 5, so the graphic limitations of the IIgs don't
bother me that much.  Instead, I get the fully-debugged highly-stable
extremely useable IIgs for most of my computing.  Heck, I can even do
desktop publishing on my IIgs.  No, it's not as advanced as PageMaker 5.0,
but it is fine for my needs.

That's my $0.02 worth.  The IIgs is a wonderful machine, even though there
are some things better done on other platforms.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.
-- 
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