Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!usenet!davis
From: davis@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu (Palmer Davis)
Subject: SysV/386
Message-ID: <1991Jun14.212405.17554@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>
Summary: bad deal
Keywords: green fuzzy bananas
Sender: news@usenet.ins.cwru.edu
Nntp-Posting-Host: usenet.ins.cwru.edu
Reply-To: davis@po.CWRU.Edu
Organization: Case Western Reserve Univ. Cleveland, Ohio, (USA)
References: <1991Jun13.142906.28474@ni.umd.edu> <SIMMONS.91Jun13132534@rigel.neep.wisc.edu> <1991Jun14.194907.2960@kithrup.COM>
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 91 21:24:05 GMT
Lines:       36

In article <1991Jun14.194907.2960@kithrup.COM> sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) writes:
>
>Of course, you could have gotten a cheap '386 clone and run unix on that for
>about half the money.
>

No, you couldn't have.  I just got rid of my AT&T 6386, which originally
cost ~$2800 a couple years ago through the university.  (20 MHz, 13" monitor
that wobbled badly when you tried to stick it into 800x600 mode.)  Hardware
prices and UNIX licenses are both considerably less expensive now, but not
"years ago."  And even today, once you add together the '386 CPU that's
"half the money," a large enough hard drive to hold the enormous distributions
most vendors are shipping (since we're talking about competing with the
NeXT, you need TCP/IP, X, Motif, Looking Glass (if you're the "drool-proof"
type -- I'm not), development tools, and room enough to build Emacs, gcc, 
and TeX), eight megs of memory, an ethernet card, super VGA card, monitor,
and UNIX license, you come out with a system that costs almost as much as
the $3250 NeXTstations our bookstore is shipping, with less than half the
horsepower, a crippled I/O bus, and no multimedia capabilities.  Throw in
a Sigma LaserView, a Sound Blaster, and upgrade the CPU to a 486/25, and
you have a more expensive system that still doesn't give you what the NeXT
does -- you still have a losing OS, less horsepower, marginal multimedia
hardware, and none of the software NeXT gives you.  Go with the really neat
486/25 EISA stuff that's starting to come out, and you might as well have
bought an HP 9000/720.

Unless you're using a bottom-of-the-line 386SX with minimal facilities, 
System V/386 is a major lose.

-- PTD --

-- 
Palmer Davis <davis@po.cwru.edu>     I'm probably wrong, so don't blame INS.
CWRU Information Network Services                 Life is short.
"Delaware has 1.1 million corporations -- I mean chickens."  (sct)
