Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!toro!nick
From: nick@toro.UUCP (Nicholas Jacobs)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Will the Next sell?
Message-ID: <1191@toro.UUCP>
Date: 24 Nov 89 16:37:01 GMT
References: <4283@helios.ee.lbl.gov> <245300021@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: nick@toro.UUCP (Nicholas Jacobs)
Organization: Merrill Lynch Municipal Securities Systems Development, NY
Lines: 31

In article <245300021@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
    >
    >And, please don't use the argument "I can use a diskless workstation".
    >Nobody - nobody - is going to make lots of sales of diskless
    >workstations. In ten years nobody - nobody - is going to make sales
    >of diskless electric mixers (and that is a serious prediction!).
    >"Lots of sales" implies selling single machines for stand-alone use.
    >
    >Doug MCDonald

Let me preface with the comment that we do not yet own any of the NeXT
machines... But in fact, diskless workstations are very useful, regardless
of the vendor. We have several regional offices (i.e., they are far away
from NYC) and the ability to update software (including system updates)
remotely is very important. It takes far less time to update one or two
servers and let the other machines boot off them and run application software.

I do agree that having a small local disk for swap is very useful, but many
of our users are not interested in using the machine on their desk for any-
thing but the applications we supply. I think that "Lots of sales" implies
large organizations like the U.S Gov't and Fortune 500 corp's buying machines,
and these groups more and more are requiring that they can cost-effectively
network and maintain these machines.

Just my $0.02...

Nicholas Jacobs
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