hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) (08/03/88)
Bell Tech's cheap SV looks very attractive, particularly in comparison with Microport's new higher prices. However I'm curious whether there's any way to evaluate how it is going to work out in the long run. As I see it, they are essentially duplicating the history of Microport. From what I can find out, Microport started out on the theory that since Intel and ATT had spent all this money developing SV/286, it should be possible to produce a version for the AT with very little extra effort. Little extra manpower would be needed to support it, since ATT and Intel were already committed to do most of the work. Thus we had Microport undercutting SCO by a factor of 2. This is all fine in theory. But it didn't work. As serious bugs started building up with little in the way of fixes, it because apparent that you can't support a product without a development staff. (Note that I am separating development and support. Their support, i.e. dealing with questions from users, seemed OK. The problem was when a change needed to be made to the software.) I'm hoping that the recent price rises indicate that they realize they're going to have to increase their staff, and that these problems will be fixed. However their large price advantage is also largely a thing of the past as well. Now we have Bell Tech. They are charging much less than Microport for what is nominally the a very similar product. However as they put it themselves, they are simply publishers for ATT. If you find a problem (presumably with the exception of Bell Tech device drivers), about all they can do is MR it to ATT. This all sounds very familiar. Is there any reason to think that this effort at bypassing a development staff is going to work better than the last one? I'm prepared to believe that ATT is more serious about the 386 product than it was about the 286 product. Thus it might be that ATT is committing enough resources to make this work where the 286 didn't. But does anyone have evidence yet of how responsive ATT via Bell Tech is to problems? These are not rhetorical questions. I'm probably going to wait a bit, but at some point I'm going to want to upgrade to a 386 processor. Since Microport seems to have given up the idea of selling 286 to 386 upgrades for less than the price of a new 386 license (a decision that I suspect will prove to be very bad), this means I'm going to be reevaluating the alternatives. I'd love to save money, but I'd also like software that works.
plocher@uport.UUCP (John Plocher) (08/04/88)
In <Aug.2.23.02.42.1988.14269@athos.rutgers.edu> Charles Hedrick writes: >Since Microport seems to have given up the idea of selling 286 to 386 >upgrades for less than the price of a new 386 license (a decision that >I suspect will prove to be very bad) Where did you come up with this idea? We still offer 286 to 386 upgrades, from $195 for the runtime package alone to $585 for the complete system. Sorry for the marketing, but .... -John
hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) (08/05/88)
>>Since Microport seems to have given up the idea of selling 286 to 386 >>upgrades >Where did you come up with this idea? We still offer 286 to 386 upgrades, >from $195 for the runtime package alone to $585 for the complete system. From one of your sales guys. Where else would I come up with information of this sort? Glad to hear it. That will make it much more likely that I stick with you folks.