Subject: chemistry software and Windows NT

From: Leif Laaksonen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 May 1996 07:58:50 +0300 (EET DST)

Dear Computational Chemists,

I'm sorry this is not really chemistry but I guess it is also allowed
to discuss aspects of computational chemistry software on this list?

It's about a year ago we had the last discussion about the usability of
Windows NT for computational chemistry. If I still remember right, the
response was not too enthusiastic from the user community. Unix
workstations are still the ones people want on their descs. There is
however a life even outside computational chemistry and it looks
very strongly that Unix is loosing ground on other sectors. There
is an interesting article in the May issue of Byte about the Unix/NT
server aspects. Quite a lot of the stuff is general and applies to the
workstation market as well. I also know that the major molecular modelling
companies will have more products in the near future for the Windows 95/NT
platform. I believe that in pure computational (cpu) aspects the Unix
boxes still have a speed advantage but I'n not quite sure about other
aspects like graphics, database handling...

This was a rather long intro to my question. How do you see the 
workstation market at the moment? Do you have more interest in the 
W95/NT platforms and would you be interested to see more software on
other platforms than Unix?

I think this must be the first time it is possible to develop a graphics
package which can be run (without major rewriting) on most hardware
platforms (Unix, PC/Windows, Macintosh...) using free available libraries
or tools like Tcl/Tk and MESA (OpenGL lookalike 3D graphics library),
just to mention one approach. 

Please let me know what you think and I will summarize the respond
for everyone to enjoy.

Thanks for your help.

-leif laaksonen

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Leif Laaksonen                     |  
Center for Scientific Computing    | Phone:      358 0 4572378
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---------URL: http://laaksonen.csc.fi/leif.laaksonen.html----------

>From [email-masked] Thu May 30 23:03 EDT 1996
From: Jan Labanowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 May 1996 23:03:22 -0400
Message-Id: <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Commercial Postings on CCL
Forwarding: Mail from 'Maschek <[email-masked]>'
     dated: 29 May 96 09:47:12 EDT
Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 2455
Status: R

Dear Subscibers of CCL,

Just to remind you that people who are posting long commercial adds
or other stuff which is a 'no-no' according to a help file,
are dully entered into the reject file (this file contains addresses
which are "suspect" and whose messages have to be reviewed by me
before they can be posted). On the other hand, some messages get rejected
for other reasons (scripts are checking some header lines to detect
"unsafe" addresses) which have nothing to do with "unnetical" behaviour.
Sometimes scripts get fooled in either way, i.e., will pass junk,
or stop pearls, diamonds, and krugerrands. Sorry about it...

I am kinda busy lately so the messages which were rejected for whatever
reason sit often up to a few days in the purgatory.

Also, please read about the new service below, which may be of value
if you are planning on buying software.

Jan Labanowski
[email-masked]

---------- Begin Forwarded Message ----------
>From [email-masked] Wed May 29 09:52 EDT 1996
Date: 29 May 96 09:47:12 EDT
From: Maschek <[email-masked]>
To: Jan Labanowski <[email-masked]>
Subject: Commercial Postings on CCL
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>

Dear Dr. Labanowski :

Having been a subscriber to your and other scientific mailing
lists, we do understand what a workload the organisation and
operation of such a mail service is and how annoying commercial
postings can be in an endevour which sole purpose is the free
interchange of scientific and research information.
On the other hand a certain percentage of your subscribers do
as well have an interest in receiving information about 
commercially available products and services. To solve the problems
of both parties, those interested only in academic information and 
those with an additional interest in commercial information, we have
decided to offer a free list service for such commercially 
relevant information.
Everybody who is interested to read and/or to post commercial
viable information can subscribe as of today to the Commercial
Computational Chemistry List (CCLCOM) using the following command:

subscribe

to : 

[email-masked]

We would appreciate if you could post this message to all your
subscribers and by such hopefully get rid of all commercial traffic
on your list.

Yours sincerely,

Manfred Maschek
The Science Information Company
[email-masked]

----------- End Forwarded Message -----------