Re: workstation speed

["Robert W. Kerns" <RWK@scrc-yukon.arpa>]

    Date: Thu, 6 Aug 87 12:19:22 CDT
    From: forbus@p.cs.uiuc.edu (Kenneth Forbus)
    That's about right, I think.  On one of my qualitative simulators
    (about 4K lines of code, with run times ranging from minutes to hours
    depending on the example), I found a 16MB Explorer-II with their 512MB
    disk about 2.8 times faster than a 3670 w/16MB & 474MB Eagle, running
    6.1.  
Gee, isn't it nice that you're comparing their latest stuff with
our ancient history.  7.1 has a lot of speedups.  (But thanks for
the other nice things you said).

	  Unlike the first explorer, which broke when I poked around in
    its innards during AAAI-84, this one responded well to user abuse  
    (from the keyboard, that is).

    The user-interface felt much, much snappier than my Symbolics machine
    as well.  I'm now dreading Rel 7 conversion, given that windowing will
    be even slower...I admit to being somewhat depressed by the path Symbolics
    was taking.  Rel 7 feels like a cadillac.  What I want is a formula jeep
    (i.e., extremely fast, but able to take hard jolts and knocks).

The Rel 7 user-interface tools will take you places that will make your
shiny new "Explorer" II look like a strictly paved-street machine.  We
give you mud tires and a powerful user-interface engine.  There's lots
of leverage in the gearbox to get your applications up the hill quickly,
without getting bogged down in the swamps of writing mouse-sensitivity
code, layouts, etc.

And don't forget, it comes with an 8-times larger cargo area.

The Release 7 window system is only slower if you have it doing a LOT
more for you.  Like history, and powerful mouse-sensitivity.  Whenever I
go back to 6.1 (as rarely as possible), it feels incredibly klunky and
awkward to use.  But reactionaries and speed addicts can still use
old-style lisp listeners, with their amnesiac output and their autistic
mouse handling.

I think you'll find the 7.1 features to be well worth any minor slowdowns.
I find it a lot faster to actually USE, and tens of times faster to write
any user-interface.