[229] in Athena User Interface
Re: Thoughts on quickstations
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher D. Beland)
Fri Jun 23 03:18:33 2000
Message-Id: <200006230718.DAA06246@No-Whammies.mit.edu>
To: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
Cc: aui@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: The events that comprise the history of the universe.
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 03:18:26 -0400
From: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
From observing the behavior of people in the clusters, it would seem
somewhat more efficient to swap out some existing fast machines to
make all of the quickstations actually quick - even if we do make
Gnome-Athena Light for these machines.
My rationale:
At peak hours, the quickstations are in very high demand. Sometimes a
separate line for the QS forms, as one or two people give up cruising
the cluster and wait for a machine they know will be open real soon
now. At non-peak hours, there are open machines in all the clusters.
People seem to figure out on their own which models are fast and which
aren't.
It seems like the optimal solution, then, would be to put the slowest
machines in a corner somewhere, where they are only used during peak
demand, when it's probably better to quickly get people through the
quickstation queue, rather than waste a fast machine on someone who's
probably just stopping by on their lunch break to check their mail,
anyway. Besides which, people have an expectation that the
Quickstations will/should be fast (this comes up in the unsolicited
feedback I've reviewed) and actually making them so would seem to make
them happier.
But maybe Owls has a better rationale behind the current strategy?
-B.
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Christopher Beland - http://web.mit.edu/beland/www/contact.html
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