Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!uokmax!rob From: rob@uokmax.uucp (Bolo) Newsgroups: comp.unix.aux Subject: Re: FLAME Concerning Apple's pricing of A/UX 2.0. Message-ID: <1990Jun3.024656.30114@uokmax.uucp> Date: 3 Jun 90 02:46:56 GMT References: <1990Jun1.185845.24189@ox.com> <190@news.nd.edu> Organization: Engineering Computer Network, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK Lines: 44 In article <190@news.nd.edu> mahesh@news.nd.edu (Mahesh Subramanya) writes: >From article <1990Jun1.185845.24189@ox.com>, by time@ox.com (Tim Endres): >> >> Developers! BEWARE OF A/UX 2.0! >> Apple can not support it, they can not price it, they will not ^^^^^^^ Funny, we've never had any trouble getting through to tech support, the few times we've had to call. They've been very helpful. >> sell it! And your product will sink along with its sales! >I have got to agree with the above. It is almost scary to see what Apple >gets away with when it comes to foisting things off on its *devoted* fans. Remember, A/UX is an ADD ON operating system for the Macintosh. You already get the Macintosh OS free. So, let's compare prices against Unix for, say, your typical 386. What's the price on a 386 Unix with: windowing system, TCP/IP support, SLIP support, NFS, Adobe Transcript, C and Fortran compilers, UUCP, full Berkeley networking, job control, streams and sockets, fast file system, nroff, troff, Berkeley line printer system, multiple ethernet support (we've got 4 in our router), and all standard utilties. Retail, since that's what I've heard quoted for A/UX. The prices I've seen seem pretty much in line with other systems, especially if you consider other factors than straight single-quantity price. For example, Sun may include the OS in the price of the box, but they also charged us around $800 for the last SUNOS upgrade to our Sun 3. Not to mention charging an additional $750 for an ethernet driver that works with more than 2 ethernet cards. (university price, with no support). Oh, and if you haven't checked, the price for A/UX goes down drastically with quantity (or, it did for 1.1.1. I don't have a price list for 2.0 yet). Dropped from around $600 at quantity 1 to something under $50 at some large number. I also seem to remember a VAR program for A/UX that was announced about the time it was first released. If it still exists (ever existed?) then it should have some quantity discounts involved also (assuming you plan on selling more than a few systems). Robert -- Robert K. Shull rob@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu chinet!uokmax!rob