forrest@sybase.com (12/01/90)
As an happy owner of some Northgate stuff I'm sorry to see them
in dire straights. Maybe this is partially caused by all the money
they wasted on excessive advertising. Have you ever noticed how
many needless pages of advertising they've purchased over the years.
I've been cleaning out a bunch of old Infoworlds and I'd say that
each one has over 10 pages of ads from Northgate alone. What a waste
of money!!
----
Anything you read here is my opinion and in no way represents Sybase, Inc.
Jon Forrest WB6EDM
forrest@sybase.com
{pacbell,sun,{uunet,ucbvax}!mtxinu}!sybase!forrest
415-596-3422daly@ecs.umass.edu (12/02/90)
In article <11951@sybase.sybase.com>, forrest@sybase.com writes: > As an happy owner of some Northgate stuff I'm sorry to see them > in dire straights. Maybe this is partially caused by all the money > they wasted on excessive advertising. Have you ever noticed how > many needless pages of advertising they've purchased over the years. > I've been cleaning out a bunch of old Infoworlds and I'd say that > each one has over 10 pages of ads from Northgate alone. What a waste > of money!! > I'd also say it was because of their high prices. While I was shopping around for a 33MHz system, I investigated Northgate's prices, and found them to be on the expensive side. For the system I looked at, Gateway 2000's price was almost $900 less than what is advertised for Northgate's system. ($3400 vs. $4300) (To be fair, though, I happened to call Gateway on the day they were offering some sort of unadvertised special, which reduced their normal price by about $300). While Northgate is known to produce good systems, I found the price difference too great to make them a serious consideration. Perhaps other people were thinking the same thing. I do agree with you about their advertising, though. They have pages and pages in PC Magazine, BYTE, and Computer Shopper also. Bryon Daly daly@ecs.UMass.edu
john@newave.UUCP (John A. Weeks III) (12/02/90)
In article <11951@sybase.sybase.com> forrest@sybase.com writes: > As an happy owner of some Northgate stuff I'm sorry to see them > in dire straights. Maybe this is partially caused by all the money > they wasted on excessive advertising. Somebody must of forgot to tell Northgate that they were in trouble. True, they did layoff a few people the other day, they are experiencing extremely rapid growth, they just opened up more retail outlets in the twin cities, they just moved into a new corporate headquarters in Eden Prairie, MN (the old Lee Data building), they just bought out two rivals, new marketing agreements, announced Sparc machines, had another record quarter, hired new supposedly brilliant CEO, etc. I wish I was in that bad of shape. As far as excessive advertising, someone has to pay for all of those free magazines that I receive 8-). -john- -- =============================================================================== John A. Weeks III (612) 942-6969 john@newave.mn.org NeWave Communications ...uunet!rosevax!tcnet!wd0gol!newave!john ===============================================================================
sheinfel@grad1.cis.upenn.edu (Aviad Sheinfeld) (12/03/90)
In article <11624.27585ccb@ecs.umass.edu> daly@ecs.umass.edu writes: >In article <11951@sybase.sybase.com>, forrest@sybase.com writes: >> As an happy owner of some Northgate stuff I'm sorry to see them >> in dire straights. Maybe this is partially caused by all the money >> they wasted on excessive advertising... >> > >I'd also say it was because of their high prices... > >While Northgate is known to produce good systems, I found the price difference >too great to make them a serious consideration. Perhaps other people were >thinking the same thing... > >Bryon Daly >daly@ecs.UMass.edu > I, too was recently looking for a new 386-25 system and called Northgate because of the good reputation their product had. I found that the best price they gave me - the only price they gave me - was ~$800 over other well known mail order places, and was ~$1500 over what I ended up paying. Although I was looking for the lowest price for a good product (i.e. brand name manufacturers for all components, AMI BIOS) I'd still say Northgate is too close to IBM and Compaq prices to stay in the mail order business for long. Aviad