mark@intek01.uucp (Mark McWiggins) (07/31/90)
Surprised I haven't seen this here before now, and it seems definitely
of interest to the net ...
Microport (+1 800 FOR UNIX) is back out of Chapter 11 (or whatever chapter
they were in) and shipping a "developer's release" of SVR4 with the
kitchen sink (TCP/IP, NFS, RFS, X, Streams, everything I can think of
but DWB). I asked when and the guy said "now." Don't know what
"devleoper's release" means ("buggy?" "don't even think of calling for
support?" (1/2 :) ). Now for the bad news: it comes on tape only, and
costs $2500.
UHC (+1 713 782 2700) is shipping a similar package, allegedly on August
15 (though yours may take 4-6 weeks because of their overwhelming backlog,
she said). They'll ship on tape or floppies and want $2995, although
they supposedly have a "VAR program" through which I presume you could make
a better deal.
Disclaimer and editorial: I don't have any association with either of
these two companies, and may never. Gosh, these prices seem a little
steep, to say the least. Have Everex or Intel or Dell made an announcement
that I missed?
If I run the numbers:
386/25 VGA $2500
300 MB disk $1500
Tape drive $1000
Unix SVR4 $2500
Total $7500
I could buy a better-performing Sparcstation SLC for about this (by the time
I added disk & tape), and no doubt a Data General or MIPS for somewhere in
the same range.
Maybe the support costs for a 386 Unix vendor trying to handle questions on
all those assembled-in-pieces systems are so stratospheric that the workstation
vendors are getting a serious competitive advantage, with their relatively
few possible configurations?
I must be missing something ...
--
Mark McWiggins Integration Technologies, Inc. (Intek)
+1 206 455 9935 DISCLAIMER: I could be wrong ...
1400 112th Ave SE #202 Bellevue WA 98004
uunet!intek01!mark Ask me about C++!larry@nstar.uucp (Larry Snyder) (07/31/90)
mark@intek01.uucp (Mark McWiggins) writes: >Microport (+1 800 FOR UNIX) is back out of Chapter 11 (or whatever chapter >they were in) and shipping a "developer's release" of SVR4 with the >kitchen sink (TCP/IP, NFS, RFS, X, Streams, everything I can think of >but DWB). I asked when and the guy said "now." Don't know what >"devleoper's release" means ("buggy?" "don't even think of calling for >support?" (1/2 :) ). Now for the bad news: it comes on tape only, and >costs $2500. $2500 for Microport - is that list price? Is there a discount for VAR's and or developers? -- Larry Snyder, Northern Star Communications, Notre Dame, IN USA uucp: iuvax!ndmath!nstar!larry -or- larry@nstar Public Access Unix Site (219) 289-0282 (5 lines/PEP/HST/Hayes-V)
root@grumbly.UUCP (rb duc) (08/05/90)
In article <1990Aug2.003304.19278@alembic.acs.com> bill@alembic.acs.com (Bill Hatch) writes:
->As a uport V386 owner -- i can not understand why anyone would even
->consider the purchase of a microport release when you can get
->open desktop , multi-user, sw dev system, DWB, and much more from
->SCO for about $2800. As per the recent news articles, microport
->wants $1600 to $2500 for a product "to be defined".
->
->bill hatch
==================
The full release 4 contains *alot* - development system, several GUIs,
networking, multiuser, dos - this is just a partial list of what I know
about at the moment. The complete package has more than this. I'll
check on it next week and get a complete list.
\\\
- - Richard Ducoty ..uunet!grumbly!root
_] Capitola, California root@grumbly.comevan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) (08/05/90)
In article <1990Aug3.214737.7651@cichlid.com> aab@cichlid.com (Andrew A. Burgess) writes: >Two, SCO won't be upgrading to S5R4 for a while. They have said on the net >(I believe) that they will add R4 functionality to their port of R3.2. >I personally don't trust them to get things (BSD file system and utilities, >job control, fill in the blank _____) as right as the real S5R4. This jives with something I heard on the grapevine. The word was that SCO was flat out never going to get the AT&T SVr4 license, but will just add features to its 3.2 to give it "functionality" of future releases. If true, it means SCO customers are destined to relive the Xenix politics all over again, just when it was all supposed to be resolved. In the same way that Xenix System V was an old release of Unix, patched up to work like Unix System V, will SCO's "Unix version four" be a BSD-patched version of its 3.2? Can someone from SCO publicly state what the company's policies are at the present time regarding migration to Release 4? If you have no plans to do it the same way as the rest of the world, at least be upfront about it. >People are interested in the little guys like Microport and ESIX >because they can give you alot of bang for the buck. And, because they're small, they tend to refrain from re-inventing wheels. -- _____ / \ \/\/ | Evan Leibovitch | (o)(o) Sound Software, located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario C .---_) evan@telly.on.ca / uunet!attcan!telly!evan | |.___| | \__/ "Son, there's a little Homer Simpson in all of us." /_____\
mason@oct1.UUCP (David Mason) (08/09/90)
evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes: >aab@cichlid.com (Andrew A. Burgess) writes: >>People are interested in the little guys like Microport and ESIX >>because they can give you alot of bang for the buck. > >And, because they're small, they tend to refrain from re-inventing >wheels. And they refrain from inventing their own `standards': "Then they added standards no one else had. And that was just the beginning." Quote from an SCO Unix 3.2 advertisement, back cover, Unix World September 1989. The quote was self-referring to The SCO. -------------------- David | mason@oct1 (David M Mason) | olsa99!oct1!mason@ddsw1.mcs.com
rick@pcrat.uucp (Rick Richardson) (08/12/90)
In article <1990Aug9.165130.11299@oct1.UUCP> mason@oct1.UUCP (David Mason) writes: >Quote from an SCO Unix 3.2 advertisement, back cover, Unix World >September 1989. The quote was self-referring to The SCO. Are you saying that "The SCO" has achieved "The Donald"-like status? Or is it just that Marla Maples has been seen in Santa Cruz lately? Whose next? The Bill? (gotta be Joy, I don't think Gates has enough devil in him). -Rick -- Rick Richardson - PC Research, Inc., uunet!pcrat!rick, (201) 389-8963