bcr@bohr.physics.purdue.edu (Bill C. Riemers) writes:
: In article <1odu8mINNjjc@srvr1.engin.umich.edu> tonychen@engin.umich.edu (Antony Chen) writes:
: >Are you kidding? Put it this way. NS486 will cost you mucho money. Linux
: >will NOT cost you a dollar. Personally, if ya got the cash, go with NS486,
: >get support of NeXT (if they're around much longer). Good luck.
:
: Hmmm..., our department installed a set of NeXT stations. Other than a couple
: of neat tricks such as voice mail, they are horrable. I've gotten now so I
: take a couple of minuites when I startup so I can use them as an x-terminal.
:
: Bill
:
:
Let's differentiate a bit: it really depends on what You expect
from the user interface. Having used both X and NeXTStep, I can
assure You that most people have much less trouble getting started
with NeXTStep than with X. And the fact that NeXTStep has PostScript
built in makes typesetting life much easier, I have yet to see a
TeX previewer for X that can display my .dvi files accurately (using
a dvi2ps converter an a ps previewer only results in undreadable
output, ps-previewers are usually designed to preview graphics,
not text).
Or if someone uses Mathematica most of the time, then the increased
productivity due to the notebook interface may have been a more
important factor for the decision between X and NeXTstep (it isn't
any longer, of course).
Of course, if Your graphics software has to run on a wide range of
platforms, You better consider X. But many X applications have quite
horrible user interfaces, and most X users I know mainly use a
couple of xterms with ordinary curses applications or worse running
in them, You can do that on NeXTStep too, but usually there are
better ways.
Finally, voice mail and the like aren't just neat tricks, some
people like them very much: my wife enjoys sending an receiving
pictures of our kids without having to know about tar and uuencode...
Just my 0.02$
Andreas Mueller
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Dr. Andreas Mueller afm@mathi.uni-heidelberg.de
Mathematisches Institut
Im Neuenheimer Feld 288
W - 6900 Heidelberg 1
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