Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mrmarx!abvax!jaz
From: jaz@abvax.UUCP (Jack A. Zucker)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: NeXT vs Sun3
Keywords: Next Sun3
Message-ID: <925@abvax.UUCP>
Date: 19 Oct 89 17:13:51 GMT
Organization: Allen-Bradley Company, Inc; Industrial Computer Division, Highland Heights, OH
Lines: 20

I am getting ready to purchase a workstation. I had pretty much settled on
either a Sun 3/80 or the Sparc1 machines. I can get the 3/80 with 4mb of
memory, 19" monitor, diskless for about $5000.00. The Sparc1 is about $7000.00
with a 17" monitor and 8mb of memory. For $10000.00, I can buy a NeXT machine
with 8mb of memory, 17" monitor, 256mb optical disk, etc... The big questions
I have about the system are these:

	1) Is the optical disk too slow (for virtual memory paging,etc) ? (And
	do large applications take forever to load?)

	2) Is the propietary display system going to hinder software 3rd
	party software that either I write, or that I want to get? This
	is especially critical now that I can run X/Open on my Sun 3/80
	at work under the X/NeWS display postscript system. Maybe X/NeWS
	will be ported to the NeXT.

Does anyone have any comments that would help me make my decision ?
Thanks, -Jaz
(jaz@icd.ab.com)