Re: [MacPerl] [ALBOT] Mac Y2K Oops?

[Chris Nandor <pudge@pobox.com>]

At 05.27 -0500 1999.02.09, Arved Sandstrom wrote:
>On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, Richard Gordon wrote:
>
>> So, I've set to work on my MacPerl freeware to run on text files before
>> they are imported. I've got it reliably (?) converting 1200 dates per
>> second on an aging 8100/100 and remain awed by MacPerl's speed when used
>               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> for things like this.
>
>Hey! I resemble that remark! :-)
>
>Seriously, I do all my stuff at home on a 6100/60, and I've yet to run
>into anything where speed was actually so much of an issue that I felt the
>urge to go out and get a G3 or a 450MHz Dell. Except (and this is no joke)
>when trying to read docs using Acrobat Reader.

Yeah, it is funny how we think the latest speed is more important than it
is.  The Finder is the slowest thing to use on my old 7100/66.  The web
browser is not too speedy.  But I use it for routing IP packets, IRC,
MacPerl, BBEdit, and some web browsing, and it handles the job fine and
almost never crashes.  When I do crash, usually it is because my network
connection crashes first.

Most people can still get by fine with a 601 processor, except for one
thing: web browsing.  Web browsers and streaming video and other multimedia
are the only reason for most people to get G3s.  It's pretty silly.  If
Mozilla really does work out, and significantly lower the memory footprint
and increase the speed, it could resurrect a lot of old machines into
usefulness again.


>I wrote a custom database app for my Dad that runs on his 16MHz LCII,
>which handles MacPerl 520r4 just fine BTW, which was all in Perl, and does
>all his accounting and reports for his role as a church treasurer, and
>that app has been chugging away for a year. It's a text-based DB. It's
>pretty tweaked in order to be useable on an LCII, so I figure if you stuck
>it on a G3, stand back!!!

Yeah, I need to get this LCII someone gave me for free updated with more
RAM and VRAM so I can use it.

Anyway, the moral is that you can do most of what you need to on old
computers.  I need a 292 MHz machine for Virtual PC.  Compiling stuff in
MPW and CodeWarrior is a lot faster too.   In most apps, I notice very
little difference between this PowerBook and the 7100.

--
Chris Nandor          mailto:pudge@pobox.com         http://pudge.net/
%PGPKey = ('B76E72AD', [1024, '0824090B CE73CA10  1FF77F13 8180B6B6'])

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