davis@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu (Palmer Davis) (06/15/91)
In article <1991Jun14.194907.2960@kithrup.COM> sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) writes: > >Of course, you could have gotten a cheap '386 clone and run unix on that for >about half the money. > No, you couldn't have. I just got rid of my AT&T 6386, which originally cost ~$2800 a couple years ago through the university. (20 MHz, 13" monitor that wobbled badly when you tried to stick it into 800x600 mode.) Hardware prices and UNIX licenses are both considerably less expensive now, but not "years ago." And even today, once you add together the '386 CPU that's "half the money," a large enough hard drive to hold the enormous distributions most vendors are shipping (since we're talking about competing with the NeXT, you need TCP/IP, X, Motif, Looking Glass (if you're the "drool-proof" type -- I'm not), development tools, and room enough to build Emacs, gcc, and TeX), eight megs of memory, an ethernet card, super VGA card, monitor, and UNIX license, you come out with a system that costs almost as much as the $3250 NeXTstations our bookstore is shipping, with less than half the horsepower, a crippled I/O bus, and no multimedia capabilities. Throw in a Sigma LaserView, a Sound Blaster, and upgrade the CPU to a 486/25, and you have a more expensive system that still doesn't give you what the NeXT does -- you still have a losing OS, less horsepower, marginal multimedia hardware, and none of the software NeXT gives you. Go with the really neat 486/25 EISA stuff that's starting to come out, and you might as well have bought an HP 9000/720. Unless you're using a bottom-of-the-line 386SX with minimal facilities, System V/386 is a major lose. -- PTD -- -- Palmer Davis <davis@po.cwru.edu> I'm probably wrong, so don't blame INS. CWRU Information Network Services Life is short. "Delaware has 1.1 million corporations -- I mean chickens." (sct)
sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) (06/16/91)
In article <1991Jun14.212405.17554@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> davis@po.CWRU.Edu writes: >And even today, once you add together the '386 CPU that's >"half the money," a large enough hard drive to hold the enormous distributions >most vendors are shipping (since we're talking about competing with the >NeXT, you need TCP/IP, X, Motif, Looking Glass (if you're the "drool-proof" >type -- I'm not), development tools, and room enough to build Emacs, gcc, >and TeX), eight megs of memory, an ethernet card, super VGA card, monitor, >and UNIX license, you come out with a system that costs almost as much as >the $3250 NeXTstations our bookstore is shipping, with less than half the >horsepower, a crippled I/O bus, and no multimedia capabilities. Oh, *I* see. You don't want "just a unix box," you want something that has graphics, networking (even though it's gonig to be a home computer?), a fancy GUI, etc. At home, *I don't use X*. I use X and NeXTStep at work, but I got by without them for years. And I paid a whopping total of $2800 for my 25MHz machine with 8MBytes of RAM, an FPU, 122Mbyte RLL and 380MByte SCSI disks, and monitor. I bought a used monitor and FPU, and waited for memory to get cheap before I got 4Mbytes of that 8Mbytes, and went in on a group buy for the disk. (I got my OS for free, because of my job at the time. And I paid $25 for a cheap used ethernet card.) Yes, if you want all of the features of the NeXT, the NeXT is the best machine to go for. If you want all the applications that come with it, ditto. But for just a basic unix box, it's hard to beat an intel box. -- Sean Eric Fagan | "I made the universe, but please don't blame me for it; sef@kithrup.COM | I had a bellyache at the time." -----------------+ -- The Turtle (Stephen King, _It_) Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.
kari@finn (Kari Karhi) (06/18/91)
In article <1991Jun14.212405.17554@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> davis@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu (Palmer Davis) writes: > In article <1991Jun14.194907.2960@kithrup.COM> sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) writes: > > > >Of course, you could have gotten a cheap '386 clone and run unix on that for > >about half the money. > > > > No, you couldn't have. I just got rid of my AT&T 6386, which originally > <and so forth> Sorry about my previous reply, which basically repeats this one. I did not notice this one, since the Subject line was different, until after posting. Does someone know how to cancel a posting using NewsGrazer? Kari Karhi Pencom Software (512)343-1111 pensoft!kari@cs.utexas.edu