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[Don Y]

Zane H. Healy wrote:
>> How much has the sales side changed? I mean, I suspect for a typical user just 
>> doing some word processing etc., a simple bitmapped display is fine - they 
>> don't *need* the high speed of a card that has a lot more features.
> 
> Try running Mac OS X or Vista on such a display (or WinXP, X-Windows with
> a fancy window manager).  You'll quickly find that modern OS's require 3D
> accelerated graphics cards, and that it isn't exactly easy to turn off all
> of those functions.  This is a personal source of irritation with me, I
> don't want to waste system resources with all of those "gee wiz" features! 
> In fact the inability to turn stuff I don't want off that has been added in
> the last two versions, and them removing stuff I do want is really starting 
> to turn me off on the Mac.

OTOH, giving a user TOO MUCH control over the interface can be
just as bad.  You end up adding code to support all these choices
and build tools to give the user access to those choices (even if
it's just a list of checkboxes, etc.) and that code has to be
maintained, tested, etc.

And, you get comments from users *trying* to use it yet finding
that it isn't *completely* flexible ("why can't I specify italic
text to be displayed in white?").

It's a tough job trying to figure out what flexibility to allow
the user and what things to cast in concrete.  Especially when you
are dealing with such a broad spectrum of users!

> OTOH, I do want a high-end graphics card and a high-end monitor for running
> my Adobe DTP apps.  It's also nice to have such a setup for surfing.  In all
> honesty for the most part, the rest of what I run could be done on a VT420
> and I'd be just fine.  On anything other than my Mac, I view a graphics
> display as a way to get a lot of terminal windows (and this is part of what
> I use it on the Mac for).  But then I am not the typical user, and that
> probably includes on CLASSICCMP.

Run screen(1)  :>