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From: dubman@ocf.berkeley.edu (Jonathan Dubman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Hidden costs for students
Keywords: five digits students
Message-ID: <1989Sep22.192608.2122@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 22 Sep 89 19:26:08 GMT
Sender: usenet@agate.berkeley.edu (USENET Administrator;;;;ZU44)
Organization: ucb
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I am about to take out a student loan and buy a NeXT machine for
development.  Ostensibly the machine costs $6500 for higher education-
a hefty price for students but conceivable for some.  But examine these
hidden costs:

Students who purchase the machine most likely will run it as a standalone
unit.  Unfortunately serious work with the current system pretty much
requires a hard drive, which puts an additional $2000 on the base price.

Universities generally have a ten to fifteen percent surcharge,
supposedly for overhead.  Let's be conservative and call it ten.  This brings
the price from $8500 to $9350.  Now the killer is state tax, which usually
runs about 7.5%, bringing the sum into five digits ($10050).  Add two disks
($50 each) and the set of manuals at $250, and my grand total will be
$10,400.  (And we haven't even started with financing fees.)

Ten thousand four hundred is just above the limit on many student loans.
Seriously, I don't think many students are going to be able to afford this
until they graduate from medical school.

I feel that the machine will be a huge success in the business and
desktop publishing market, but if most students can't afford Macs, I think
NeXT is not going to make any significant penetration in that market.
They'll sell plenty to universities, but I think I am going to be the only
kid on the block with a cube for several years.

Jonathan Dubman
UC Berkeley