vanam@pttesac.UUCP (Marnix van Ammers) (07/07/87)
Per MIS Week, the Newspaper For Information Management, Monday, July 6, 1987: AT&T CUTS TAB 75% ON AXED PC 7300 SAN JOSE, Calif -- With AT&T offering fire-sale prices on its PC 7300, or Unix PC, of nearly 75 percent less than the original list price, under the guise of a "limited time only" promotion, Convergent Technology here, which makes the machine, will discontinue the product, effective in November. Joseph Alonis, Convergent marketing manager for small Unix systems, last week said AT&T was selling the Unix PCs for approximately half of what it costs Convergent to make them. ... Under the terms of the promotion, users must purchase the machine directly from AT&T. The PC 7300, fully configured with a 20-Mbyte hard disk drive, 1 Mbyte of RAM, monitor, keyboard, mouse and operating system software, is $1,475. The three 3B1 models range in price, under the promotion, from $2,230 to $2,700. Regular list prices are $4,495 for the 7300 and between $5,745 and $7,995 for the three 3B1 models. ... Alonis said Convergent decided in 1986 to begin marketing the Unix PC under its own label as the S/50, positioned for the lowend multi-user market with support for up to five users. ... Convergent will discontinue the Unix PC effective in November ... ... It [Convergent] will continue to offer software service contracts, which are good for one year from signing, for the S/50 through November, and will provide spares and hardware support for five years. ----------------------------------------------------------- One thing wrong with this report is about having to buy directly from AT&T in order to get the sales price. In fact you can get better deals through VARs than you can through the AT&T employee sales number. Other than that I guess the unit will be MD'ed (Manufacturer Discontinued) around November. Parts will be available for another 5 years. By then you'll probably be able to buy the machines on the used market if you are in need of parts. In the meantime, if you're into UNIX this is a deal too good to pass up. A great machine at a fantastic price! Marnix ---