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From: summers@sybil.cs.Buffalo.EDU (Michael Summers)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Workstations as PCs?
Message-ID: <23844@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Date: 2 May 90 12:52:03 GMT
Sender: news@acsu.Buffalo.EDU
Organization: State University of New York at Buffalo/Comp Sci
Lines: 39

I would like to find out if the community thinks that RISC
workstations will eventually replace the high end PC's. 

For example SUN's new 4/50 will start selling for about
$5,000, diskless. It will probably eventually sell for about
$3,500 with a modest disk. This would be a 8 meg UNIX/X
machine with eithernet, mouse, 16" High Resolution Monitor,
and say a 400 meg disk.

Digitals MIPS based workstations are getting pretty cheap
also, about $6500 for a diskless machine.

IBM has just introduced the RISC System/6000 series which
offers a 27.5 MIP/ 7.4 MFLOP diskless system for $12,995.
(by the way what chip are they using anyway?)

Given the SUN example will people be buying such machines for
PC's? Is this why Ashton-Tate, and Lotus are developing
SPARC products?

What would the limitations be to the wide-spread acceptance
of RISC machines (SUN was just an example) as PC's? Will the
available SW base have to grow first? Will PC and MAC like
SW have to be abundantly available? Will X applications be a
big market?

Does anyone have any data on the number of installed RISC
workstations? 

Does anyone have any data on the projected number of such
workstations?

How many high end 386's are in use.

Any references to such data?

Please mail and data to:

summers@cs.buffalo.edu   Thanks.