sritacco@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com (Steve Ritacco) (09/22/90)
After reading all these glowing reports on the net, the information on the new NeXTs just showed up in the mail. I am seriously disappointed! Hate to burst your bubble folks, but there are some serious missunderstandings being pushed around. #1 The NeXTdimension color board can only be added to a cube. #2 The NeXTstation and NeXTstation color have no expansion capabilities. The new price for the cube is $7995 without the MO drive and the MO drive is $2995. In other words folks, No effective price reduction! Why does the cube cost $3000 more than the slab?!?!?!?!? That is outrageous! The CPU board in the slab is different from the one in the cube. There is no hope of going from a slab to a cube. Why would NeXT design 2 CPU boards that are essentially identical? Actually the slab cpu is not as high performance as the cube, it has lower throughput and can only hold half as much RAM. The slab should have been a 2 slot cube! Now that would have been hot! I really don't see why the slabs had to be "closed" boxes.
whelan@donald.wslab.Hawaii.Edu (Jerry Whelan) (09/22/90)
In article <15640002@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com> sritacco@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com (Steve Ritacco) writes:
=> Why would NeXT design 2 CPU boards that are essentially identical?
=> Actually the slab cpu is not as high performance as the cube, it has
=> lower throughput and can only hold half as much RAM.
This is interesting, how is it that the slab has lower throughput
than the cube? I haven't heard mention of this before, is it in terms
of graphics or some other area?
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whelan@ (uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu || uhccux.BITNET || nextsrv.wslab.hawaii.edu)avie@wb1.cs.cmu.edu (Avadis Tevanian) (09/23/90)
In article <15640002@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com> sritacco@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com (Steve Ritacco) writes: >Actually the slab cpu is not as high performance as the cube, it has >lower throughput and can only hold half as much RAM. The NeXTstation and NeXTcube have the same performance (conservatively 15 MIPS). The NeXTstation can be expanded to 32MB of RAM, the NeXTcube can be expanded to 64MB. -- Avadis Tevanian, Jr. (Avie) Manager, System Software NeXT, Inc. avie@NeXT.COM
rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) (09/25/90)
In article <15640002@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com> sritacco@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com (Steve Ritacco) writes: >Hate to burst your bubble folks, but there are some serious missunderstandings >being pushed around. > >#1 The NeXTdimension color board can only be added to a cube. >#2 The NeXTstation and NeXTstation color have no expansion capabilities. > >The new price for the cube is $7995 without the MO drive and the MO drive >is $2995. In other words folks, No effective price reduction! Why should there be any? The original cube was cheap for what it offered, and now it is a lot faster and still cheap. You can have either a lower price for old technology or the same price fornew technology. Wanting both reminds me of German Trade Unions that want shorter work hours AND higher pay... >Why does the cube cost $3000 more than the slab?!?!?!?!? >That is outrageous! >The CPU board in the slab is different from the one in the cube. >There is no hope of going from a slab to a cube. >Why would NeXT design 2 CPU boards that are essentially identical? They are not. There is no bus chip, no bus logic, no support of OD, etc. >Actually the slab cpu is not as high performance as the cube, it has >lower throughput and can only hold half as much RAM. >The slab should have been a 2 slot cube! Now that would have been hot! >I really don't see why the slabs had to be "closed" boxes. I guess you could answer your questions yourself: the NeXTStation is cheaper, i.e. the cube is more expensive exactly because there are all these differences that you don't like but cut costs. NeXT didn't introduce the pizza-box just because some people like this design better... Ronald ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." Bernhard Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@browncog.bitnet