[7] in 1993-clients
overall impression of proposed platforms
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (brlewis@Athena.MIT.EDU)
Thu Mar 5 09:57:34 1992
From: brlewis@Athena.MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 92 09:57:22 -0500
To: 1993-clients@Athena.MIT.EDU
RS/6000
I have no complaints about the RS/6000, so long as we build our own X
server and don't run the buggy one that came with it. I assume we
already plan on building an AFS kernel. Otherwise it seems to be just
like the RS/6000's in the field.
DECstation 5000/25
The screen size is a handicap. Since characters seem less well-defined
on color displays, I use a wider font (9x15). My emacs window takes
almost two thirds of the screen width, so side-by-side work is
impractical.
The different keyboard is mostly not a problem, but the Alt key by
Compose Character is hard to get used to. I've heard that this keyboard
runs $35. This is well worth it compared to the $500 DEC charges for
replacing a 3100 keyboard, even if $400 of that is labor. (I don't know
how the pricing actually works.)
I had no problem using the keyboard in my lap. I had such a problem
using the NeXT machine, which also attaches the mouse to the keyboard,
but the 5000/25 has about a foot more cable, so it's not as awkward.
