Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!rice!sun-spots-request
From: casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Re: Mathematica pricing gouging on Sun
Keywords: Software
Message-ID: <98@brazos.Rice.edu>
Date: 12 Jul 89 03:28:49 GMT
Sender: root@rice.edu
Organization: Sun-Spots
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Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 69, message 1 of 16


  However much I hate to say ``me too'', I must agree whole heartedly
with Alan Stebbens (aks@hub.ucsb.edu) when he says:

| However much [extra performance one can expect on a Sun over a Macintosh]
| is true, Mathematica had very little to do with the performance of the
| Sun relative to the Mac -- ostensibly you are already paying Sun for the
| performance increase.  It makes no sense to me to pay a software vendor
| more money for a product just because it runs on faster hardware.

Sun should reconsider their bogus pricing.  I will certainly recommend
that we do *NOT* purchase Mathematica for our 1600+ Suns at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory.  I don't mind paying for good software, and
I don't mind paying maintenance fees as long as they're reasonable.

Sun, Please unbundle basic price from, problem/bug response and upgrade
service, from twit response (twit response == any time you are forced to
respond RTFM).

Casey