jet@karazm.math.uh.edu (J. Eric Townsend) (08/23/90)
paraphrased w/o permission: 20Aug90, Unix Today! by Evan Schuman -- Va. Tech is dropping A/UX Mac systems this month in favor of "less expensive upcoming Unix workstations from Commodore." -- The winner of the several-hundred-machine-a-year order was an as yet unannounced SV-R4 machine from CBM. -- The (3 mips according to VT, 4-5 according to CBM) machines will be sold to the University for $3,200 and to students for $3,685 will come with 100Mb hard drive, 1Mb chip and 4Mb fast ram. Students have a choice of 1,000x800 15in monochrome or 700x500 14in color. -- CBM says the user interface is a basic UNIX shell running X. CBM didn't say if it was OpenLook or Motif. -- refused to specify when GA of the A3000 is. Comdex is suspected. -- PC selection committee of VT look at 19 vendors, including Dec, Sun, HP, DG, NeXT, IBM, NCR, ATT&T, Apple Epson, Zenith and Honeywell. -- unannounced Amiga was "head and shoulders above the other machines", says associate prof. of comp sci James Arthur, chair of the selection committee. "The Amiga just far outperformed the others" who had been willing to meet the department's very specific requirements. "We could have been reserved and gone with the IBM of Epson, or we could go out on a limb and get a lot more machine for the same amount of money." -- VT had a price ceiling of $3,700, to include two year maintenance, regardless of additional functionality. -- Arthur believes VT is the only university in the states to require incoming freshman to purchas a specific unix box. [And they get a great game machine to boot. :-] -- VT liked UNIX because of flexibility, etc. "A very innovative operating system." -- J. Eric Townsend -- University of Houston Dept. of Mathematics (713) 749-2120 Internet: jet@uh.edu Bitnet: jet@UHOU Skate UNIX(r)