declan@ratt.rutgers.edu (Declan McCullagh/LZ) (11/10/90)
In article <2431@opus.cs.mcgill.ca>, peterd@opus.cs.mcgill.ca (Peter Deutsch) writes: > I received a phone call this morning from my NeXT rep who > told me that the chips from Motorola are now due to arrive > on the 15th. She claims that NeXT is ready to build once > shipments of CPUs begin to arrive, and says my machines > should thus ship within four days of the chip shipment - > ie before the 19th. > > Well, I was originally told in June that my machines would be > ready by the "end of October" and it looks like they miss > that by at least three weeks. Of course, Sun claim to be able > to ship once they announce. > > Hmm, is there a debate here on the merits of > pre-announcing? Should NeXT (and the others who announce > before ship-date) not do this? It gives their competitors > ammunition ("they sell vaporware" which has even been said > here, despite the fact that many people have seen the > 68040s running). On the other hand, this is an industry > where the price/performance leader seems to change weekly. > Keeping yourself positioned in this market is tough. I don't know about you, but I have a NeXTstation and a cube on my desk in my dorm room right now, happily networked and benchmarking their little hearts out (seems as though my 8 MB NeXTstation is about 4.5x as fast as my 16 MB NeXT cube in MIPS and PostScripty things). Unfortunately, at BreakApp, it's only about 2.5x as fast. $-( Maybe I should have let it go beyond level 40... As for pre-announcing, I'd imagine that NeXT thought that they would have the software done - and chips in quantity - in October, so the September 18th announcement wouldn't be that premature. Well, now we know that date was a bit optimistic... But don't worry; you'll have your machines soon and they'll be worth the wait. $-) -Declan -------------------------------------------------------------------- Declan McCullagh / NeXT Campus Consultant \ declan@remus.rutgers.edu --------------------------------------------------------------------