Kemp@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL (08/21/89)
Greg Kemnitz writes: > Software for personal computers (MS-DOS machines, Macs, Amigas) tends > to cost generally less than one thousand dollars for all but the most > super-duper special puropse software. However, virtually everything for > 'workstations' is atrociously expensive in comparison, if the software > exists at all. Well, yes and no. Software pricing is pretty arbitrary, related more to what the market will bear than anything else. For example, Access Technology's 20/20 spreadsheet costs: $500 - IBM PC $600 - Sun-3, 386i, SPARC $600 - Xenix Single user $1200 - Xenix Multi user $4550 - VMS, VAX 750 $42000 - VMS, VAX 8978 and Wolfram Research's Mathematica costs: $495 - Macintosh $795 - Macintosh with numeric coprocessor $695 - MS/DOS $995 - MS/DOS with 387 coprocessor $1295 - MS/DOS with Weitek coprocessor $1800 - Sun-3 $2400 - Sun-4, 386i $8600 - VAX 750 $42000 - VAX 88xx, 8974 $240000 - Cray 2, Y-MP Anyone who thinks these numbers are related to amortizing development costs over units sold is dreaming. Nonetheless, as what we think of as "workstations" become more numerous, software prices will come down. In any case, I wouldn't call $600 for a Sun spreadsheet, or $995 for the SunWrite, SunPaint and SunDraw package "atrocious", but I would call Wolfram's $2400 for Sun Mathematica opportunistic price gouging. As for software availability, sure you can only get Cricket Graph on the Mac, but how many medical imaging packages can you buy for PC's. It all depends on what you want to do. Someone said that the difference between workstations and PCs was snob appeal. Well if all you want to do is spreadsheets, flight simulators, memos and email, and you buy a workstation, then you are doing it for snob appeal. But as Barry Shein pointed out, some of us use workstations at work, and have grown accustomed to the power of networked, multi-user computing. Jeffrey Kegler writes: > 3) Prices. When I want to find the cost of an add-on, I check > the ads in PC Magazine, etc. Sun's price list is secret. You wonder > why? (I hereby challeng Sun to allow its current price list to be > posted to the net. No unauthorized posting please. Let's argue facts > here. Show me I'm wrong.) This is ludicrous. C'mon, Jeffrey, you think because Sun doesn't advertise in the back of PC Magazine (or Byte) that it's price list is secret??? I hope nobody posts it to the net, because the "Sun Microsystems US Price List (End User and OEM Version)" was 40-50 pages long, last time I looked. In fact, because of the proliferation of new products, Scott McNealy (Sun's president) recently quipped that Apple has Sun beat on "revenue per pound of price list". If you want a copy, just walk in and ask for one. John Nagle writes: > The real difference, at this point, is the distribution channel. Yes. When Sparcstation clones are sold at Computerland, I will be happy to call them PCs, but I will still make a distinction between IBM compatible 386 machines and Sun compatible SPARC machines. The former are the top of a line that runs up from the 8088, the latter are the bottom of a line that goes up from desktop workstations to 20-30 MIPS deskside workstations to 50-100 MIPS compute servers to the Prisma 200 MIPS mini-supercomputer, all of which will run the same applications software. If you want to look at current high end personal machines, pick up a copy of MIPS Magazine "the magazine for 3 MIPS and up machines" (or something like that). The September 1989 issue compares a 33 MHz 386 PC to the Sun Sparcstation, and finds, not surprisingly, that the Sparcstation is faster and cheaper. Dave Kemp <Kemp@dockmaster.ncsc.mil> .