ken@gatech.edu (Ken Seefried iii) (10/18/88)
I don't know about Suns and IBM PS/2s, but I DO know the "true" student cost of a Mac II. Here at Tech we recently had a promotion by Apple to sell more Mac IIs. A friend at Apple said it was the best price anywhere other than for apple employees. For a Mac II (NOT Mac IIx) with: CPU (16MHz 68020/68881 6 NuBus Slots) MMU upgrade 2MB RAM 640x480x8 (256 colours) card and monitor A/UX on an 80MB HD 3.5" floppy drive total: $5995 Just to get the price even with the NeXT machine, throw in the $650 1MB upgrade to give a price of about $6550 for a 3MB Mac II. Now lets compare this to the NeXT machine: NeXT has 5MB more memory NeXT can expand to 16MB on the motherboard (maybe 64, with 4M SIMMS) Apple can expand to 8MB (or 32MB with 4M SIMMS, its been done, I believe) NeXT has ~170MB more disk (removable disk, remember) Apple has a floppy drive NeXT has ~4x more screen area Apple has 252 more colours NeXT has ethernet Apple has AppleTalk NeXT has a 25MHz 68030 and 68882 Apple has a 16MHz 68020 and 68881 (the IIx only has a 16MHz 68030) NeXT has a 56001 DSP, good for all sorts of fun, plus its a HELL of a floating point chip if your not doing sound type things. NeXT has oodles of I/O processors to reduce the load on the CPU. Apple has 1 CPU doing almost everything. NeXT has a real windowing interface (i wish it wasX, but DPS is pretty interesting...I'll have to give it a chance) Apple will have X Windows Real Soon Now NeXT uses Mach, which is 4.3 BSD compatable NeXT uses Mach, which supports multiple processors easily NeXT uses Mach, which is designed for networks NeXT uses Mach, which is designed for efficiency Apple uses A/UX, which in 2 years or so will be a pretty good unix. Right now though, its System V rel.2 with a few 4.2 features. NeXT provides Objective-C, a very good object oriented programming langauge. Apple provides 'cpp'. I don't think there is Obj-C for A/UX. Apple has the 'toolbox'...very good idea. NeXT has a collection of objects for toolbox like work. NeXT bundles Mathematica (very slick, deceptively useful) Apple doesn't, and it'll cost you $900 to get it. NeXT bundles SQL, dictionaries, thesauri, and Shakespeare (god knows why, but I think its great), WP, quotations, etc. Apple, as Joe Izusu sez, doesn't...All you get is A/UX and the standard Unix utilities. I REALLY shudder to think what an A/UX box would cost that met the NeXT specs! That is, aside from the fact that things like Mach and Obj-C are not availible for A/UX. Lets talk printers: NeXT Postscript laser printer: $2000 Apple PS laser printer (approx): $7000 Cheapest PS printer that I have seen: $3500 Lets talk disk: whoops, forgot...Apple doesn't offer a 330 or 660MB drive... I don't know what the Apple CD-ROM drive costs, but then, its not eraseable or writable... I almost bought a Mac II A/UX machine. I like the Mac II. I have the $6000+ to buy it. I'm buying a NeXT machine. When you get down to brass tacks, NeXT is giving you an order of magnatude more features for your dollar than Apple (or IBM or Sun, i bet). More software (real applications, not just tools), better, faster, more versitile hardware, and many times the future possibilities. It was wrong of the Wall Street Journal to misrepresent the facts Re: NeXT cost comparison, but under the microscope, nothing changes. The NeXT machine has the bang-per-buck factor all to itself. Jeez, I'm really trying not to look like the emmisary from the Church of the Almighty Jobs...I used to be the biggest NeXT cynic around here... ken seefried iii ...!{akgua, allegra, amd, harpo, hplabs, ken@gatech.edu masscomp, rlgvax, sb1, uf-cgrl, unmvax, ccastks@gitvm1.bitnet ut-ngp, ut-sally}!gatech!ken
casseres@Apple.COM (David Casseres) (10/19/88)
In article <17498@gatech.edu> ken@gatech.edu (Ken Seefried iii) writes: >Lets talk printers: > > NeXT Postscript laser printer: $2000 > Apple PS laser printer (approx): $7000 > Cheapest PS printer that I have seen: $3500 Just curious: do you know for a fact that NeXT's $2000 printer is a PostScript printer? For that price, I bet it isn't. I bet it's more like the LaserWriter IISC, that is, a printer that eats bitmaps which are drawn by the CPU using whatever imaging package it has -- QuickDraw in the Mac, PostScript in the NeXT. I don't know offhand what the LaserWriter IISC's educational discount price is, but I'm pretty sure it less than $2000. Of course it has the disadvantage of not using scalable fonts. And your price for the Apple PS laser printer is way off. You're thinking about the top-of-the-line LaserWriter IINTX, at retail list. Check the educational discount price for the LaserWriter IINT. >I almost bought a Mac II A/UX machine. I like the Mac II. I have the $6000+ >to buy it. I'm buying a NeXT machine. But WHEN?? David Casseres
allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery) (10/25/88)
As quoted from <17498@gatech.edu> by ken@gatech.edu (Ken Seefried iii): +--------------- | When you get down to brass tacks, NeXT is giving you an order of magnatude | more features for your dollar than Apple (or IBM or Sun, i bet). More | software (real applications, not just tools), better, faster, more versitile | hardware, and many times the future possibilities. It was | wrong of the Wall Street Journal to misrepresent the facts Re: NeXT cost | comparison, but under the microscope, nothing changes. The NeXT machine | has the bang-per-buck factor all to itself. +--------------- I'm still a bit unhappy: $6500 is *student* cost. What about J. Random Hacker over here? (I confess to a touch of lust....) ++Brandon -- Brandon S. Allbery, comp.sources.misc moderator and one admin of ncoast PA UN*X uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery <PREFERRED!> ncoast!allbery@hal.cwru.edu allbery@skybridge.sdi.cwru.edu <ALSO> allbery@uunet.uu.net comp.sources.misc is moving off ncoast -- please do NOT send submissions direct Send comp.sources.misc submissions to comp-sources-misc@<backbone>.