BAXTER_A@wehi.dn.mu.oz (03/29/90)
Hmm. Hope someone here is interested in the following. I work at an immunology institution. We have a machine (well, a few actually) called a fluorescence activated flow cytometer, which is a pretty amazing device which fires single cells through a laser beam and collects data on cell size, nucleus conformation and cell surface fluorescence. This data is handled by an in house program written on a PDP 11 and run on a VAX minicomputer. It provides dot plots, net graphs, all that neat sort of stuff. Amazingly, to use this program, you need a graphics terminal and the institute has 12 TEK whatevers. I was the first to point out to others that you could actually use MAC +'s which were 1/3 the price and where plentiful around the place anyway. I got to thinking... and it turned out (naturally) that the A500/VLT combination was a great deal better than a mac. So I analysed all my data at home over the modem.. with a full colour display, much better than what most had. I tried to hassle the FACS lab into getting an amiga as a colour terminal (ala Stanford) but without much real success. Until, that is, neaded a new terminal dedicated to a DEC computer dedicated to one of the FACSscans ( thats $12,000, $24,000, and $250,000). Frank asked me if the Amiga could run XWindows. Dave posted his neat posting about X11. I mailed a copy to Frank, and ducked up to bring it to his attention. Clearly the X11 port for the Amiga was a great deal more than he actually needed, so he was pretty impressed. But the main sales point was this: The amiga cost less than his PETTY CASH limit. No admin, no commitees, no justifying expenditure. Just go and get it. It looks to me like the amiga is making great inroads into the education markets now, because (to quote a spokesman from the SLAC) "You can't get a colour graphics terminal for anything like the price of an Amiga, and you can't get a multitasking colour graphics terminal at ANY price."