david@ztivax.UUCP (06/16/86)
And because everyone else does, they are still in business and
prospering after all these years. You can still get software,
support, hardware products, and people who know something even after a
product has been on the market for a decade or two.
During the old S-100 bus days, I had to waste a lot of time worrying
about getting someone to fix IMSAI boards even while IMSAI was still
breathing. Afterwards, nothing changed: it was still almost
impossible.
I bought another computer from an un-known, and again I spent a stupid
amount of my time trying to keep the damn thing running. Then I bough
a COMPAQ with a 32MB disk, and found that MS-DOS could not recover
from disk errors (now 3.1 seems to be able to) so every month or so
(disk errors develop over time), the system would go down for the
count (and I would count time, money, ... wasted).
Now, perhaps COMPAQ is big enough ("enough people have bought stuff
from them") that they will provide decent software with hardware.
Maybe I would buy another.
with IBM, you have less hassle. With DEC and Data Ganeral, you also
have less hassle than with little, progressive companies. Sorry, but
if your time is valuable, it normally makes a LOT of sense to pursue
the path of minimal hassle, and minimal wasted time.
Example: A small consulting company has three engineers, each of
which bills time to customers for PRODUCTIVE work at $150,000 per
year. One engineer has to waste half time keeping a small UNIX
machine going. The little machine (70% VAX performance for 7% cost,
tho not AT&T), cost the company the cost of a nice REAL VAX every two
years. That is alot of dough for a small company. And real money it
was, too.
In business, you usually cannot AFFORD to fight the "system".