> > a number of OS's. Basically, the OS takes the opportunity
> > to slow the processor or do something else, since it figures
> > you're just waiting for an event anyhow.

SunOS compensates you by adapting your process's priority (which is
not the same thing as its "nice" level) according to its behaviour, so
that an i/o-bound process gets the processor back much faster than the
regular quantum for a mix of cpu-bound processes.  Solaris probably
inherited the same thing -- although it does feel very sluggish to me
compared with SunOS, even on much faster machines.  I notice that
Linux doesn't do anything like this (but there is/was a patch for the
Linux scheduler that added a multi-list QNX-style algorithm,
significantly improving the responsiveness of interactive processes).

Ian