Re: Applix for Alpha musings ... (A mini-mini review of sorts, a

[Charles E Taylor IV <charlet hubcap clemson edu>]

On 08-Jun-99 Shane Sturrock wrote:

> I bought applix to use on a 166/UDB with 96MB running 5.2 and 2.0.36, I
> have since upgraded to a 600Mhz 21164 with 128MB running RH-6.0 and it
> works well.

I suspect it *would* work well on a 600 MHz 21164.  :)  Have you tried plotting
large (5000 point or so) datasets on the UDB, as a point of comparison?

> I've run it in 8, 16 and 32 bit modes with no problems running on TGA,
> S3-Virge DX and S3-Trio64.

That was based on the warnings in the release notes.  

> I've not noticed any problems with my systems, maybe your X server could
> do with an upgrade.  You might also be better off using the SVGA server
> rather than the S3V for your video card, it only supports 16 bit but it is
> more stable.

Heh.  Stability is the precise reason I was using the S3V server *instead* of
the SVGA server.  The SVGA server and neither of my virge cards get along very
well, unfortunately.

> Slow machine, struggle to untangle the mess that is M$ Excel format.

I'll forgive it for being slow to import a file.  My main beef with this
program is what happens *afterwards*.  I'm also a little worried about
importing charts *out* agaib, since that's something I'll actually have to do
later.  At least the numerical values in the sheets appear to stay intact.

> Word97 docs come in pretty well all things considered.

Like I said, I've really only tried the spreadsheet.

> I'm not sure what the problem is, my UDB didn't do too badly running
> Applix, it may be that you're suffering with swapping though, have a look
> at what free says.

Could it be that the charting module simply doesn't deal well with large
datasets?  Swapping isn't an issue here (I checked *that* before my last mail
:) ).

> Definitely sounds like swapping, it should never be that slow.  Maybe you
> should try doing something smaller until you get the hang of it.

That *was* one of the smaller datasets. ;)  Like I said, using a template gets
me past most of the "step by step" pain, but Applix's performance is nowhere
near the level of MS Excel 97.  It seems CPU-bound, by the way, when it's
drawing the charts, though no swapping is occuring.  I'm still going to try a
different video card/X server to see if it's something peculiar with my setup. 
Maybe it's an X thing.

In this particular instance, it would benefit greatly if, during the redraw of
the mini graph, you could still type into the text entry boxes and finish your
data entry while it's drawing.  Even if it makes the plot take *longer* to come
up, the *work* gets done faster.  Also, on the small preview plots, do all 5000
points and markers really need to be drawn?  I suspect Excel here isn't drawing
all 5000 for the preview plot (it doesn't need to - it's just a preview) and is
getting a speed boost here.

> Just have a look to see what else the machine is doing when you are
> running your spreadsheets.  Applix is pretty heavy, but I used to use the
> Intel version on a 486/33 with 20MB and it was useable and 4.4.1 on my old
> UDB was pretty snappy.

The unfortunate problem is that on a 233 MHz Alpha with 80 megs of RAM, it
seems more sluggish than on a new comparison machine - a 486 DX2/66 with 16
megs running Windows 95 and Office 97.  Ouch.  (The 16 meg Windows boxes do hit
swap hell occasionally - such as when that openGL screensaver kicks in), but
they're still clocking better spreadsheet performance).  Other apps running
were Apache (mostly idle), ftpd (idle for the time I was using Applix), and some
Windowmaker dock apps (wmmon, wmweather, wmgrabimage, wmmail, etc.)

>  Personally I am grateful that I have applix,

Sure, but I think we want the best product we can have.  This is particularly
important when as of yet we don't really have any other choice on the Alpha
platform.  At least on my Celeron I can run Star Office (or WP8 for word
processing) as well as Applix.  This isn't an "Applix sucks" type of post - I'm
just concerned that it's not seeming to measure up to Excel on "lesser"
machines on my datasets.

I'm still going to try the graphics card swap.  Even if it doens't cure the
speed issues, it should get rid of those errant grid lines.

> at
> least I can now submit papers to journals which refuse anything non-M$
> although I would rather do them in LaTeX but thats life.  Keeps me off the
> lone PC we have around here at any rate!

It's a good thing that historically exporting has worked better than importing.
;)

---
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E-Mail: Charles E Taylor IV <charlet@hubcap.clemson.edu>
                            <charlet@innova.net>
Date: 08-Jun-99
Time: 07:44:10
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Visit me on the web!
http://orangesherbert.ces.clemson.edu
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