Christopher.Young@ISL1.RI.CMU.EDU (08/18/90)
I sure was disappointed that TI wasn't at AAAI. Are they getting out of AI? Are they still going to sell Explorer and MicroExplorers? What about support for those who had them? I've always thought the Explorers were the better lisp machine, much better than Symbolics, and their support was good too. I haven't been reading this list much, but I guess something's going on that might have been covered here so please forgive my questions. -- Chris.
Rice@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU (James Rice) (08/21/90)
>> I sure was disappointed that TI wasn't at AAAI. Are >> they getting out of AI? Are they still going to sell >> Explorer and MicroExplorers? What about support for >> those who had them? >> I've always thought the Explorers were the better lisp >> machine, much better than Symbolics, and their support >> was good too. I haven't been reading this list much, >> but I guess something's going on that might have been >> covered here so please forgive my questions. >> -- Chris. This seems to have come as a bit of a surprise to many. So for those who are not yet in the know I enclose my own opinions. Broadly what TI are doing is going after vertical markets and have presumably decided that selling things like Explorers is too horizontal for them. My understanding is that they lost money on Explorers (using some bean counting algorithm). I can't help thinking that the high tech image that being in the LispM business gave TI probably paid for the whole Explorer project in terms of free publicity, but then I'm not counting the beans. Don't forget that DARPA substantially funded the development of the Explorer II processor. Yes, they'll still be providing h/w and s/w support and they will doubtless sell you Explorers, but there will never be a release 7. Rel. 6.1 will be a sort of patch release and any new stuff is just going to be dumped into the public directory in an unsupported mode. Thus, if you have software support you @i(might) want to hang on until they release 6.1 or you might find it better to cut your losses and save the money. Sticking with 6.0 won't leave you vastly incompatible with the rest of the world. As far as customer support is concerned, I recon you probably won't get much for you money so you might just as well ask info-ti-explorer if you have any questions. TI will be dragging any good people out of the Explorer group anyway if they haven't done so already (It's been pretty thin for a long time) so your questions may well fall on less competant ears anyway. They'll continue to support their hardware too for the forseeable future (2 years probably). Since we're now moving into a static sort of mode wrt TI h/w and s/w you might find it worth your while to reconsider your h/w support contract. I know that the KSL has saved a LOT of money by going onto some sort of replacement parts only type of contract (Acuff would be able to tell you better). Like insurance, maintenance contracts are statistically a bad idea unless you happen to know that you are a worse risk than they think you are. If you keep you machines in really hostile environments then it might be worth having full service but otherwise it's probably better not to have it, unless the potential cost of downtime is too great for you. Clearly there are the other Lisp vendors out there (ha) but it looks to me like Shambolics will be holding the baby for a while. I have to admit that I never would have guessed that they would be in the LispM business longer than TI. I expected them to go under a long time ago. Given that they've actually managed to launch a machine that's competitive in terms of performance with the Explorer II+ they are seriously in the running if you are thinking of getting new machines. I don't know how much they cost right now, though. I believe that we anticipate our Explorer IIs staying competitive for another year or so and then falling behind so that in about two years we'll be looking hard for new machines (and money). Quite frankly, I think TI's silence on this BBoard is a statement in itself of their level of comitment to their users. End of flame. Rice. P.S. I, too, like me Explorer. It seems really sad to me to contemplate going back in time to unix and propietory source code in the not too distant future.