Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!silma!cichlid!aab
From: aab@cichlid.com (Andrew A. Burgess)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386
Subject: Re: Re^2: SVR4 shipping, sort of, allegedly; Microport is baaaaack
Message-ID: <1990Aug3.214737.7651@cichlid.com>
Date: 3 Aug 90 21:47:37 GMT
References: <1990Jul31.013258.14239@nstar.uucp> <1990Jul31.222503.2034@intek01.uucp> <1990Aug2.003304.19278@alembic.acs.com>
Reply-To: aab@cichlid.com (Andrew A. Burgess)
Organization: Consulting Software Engineer, Felton CA
Lines: 34

In article <1990Aug2.003304.19278@alembic.acs.com> bill@alembic.acs.com (Bill Hatch) writes:
>As a uport V386 owner -- i can not understand why anyone would even
>consider the purchase of a microport release when you can get
>open desktop , multi-user, sw dev system, DWB, and much more from
>SCO for about $2800.    As per the recent news articles, microport
>wants $1600 to $2500 for a product "to be defined".  
>
>bill hatch

Several things come to mind. 

One, SCO modifies (some would say mangles :)) the UNIX that they get from ATT 
(security, mmdf, microsoft C compiler).

Two, SCO won't be upgrading to S5R4 for a while. They have said on the net
(I believe) that they will add R4 functionality to their port of R3.2.
I personally don't trust them to get things (BSD file system and utilities,
job control, fill in the blank _____) as right as the real S5R4.

People are interested in the little guys like Microport and ESIX
because they can give you alot of bang for the buck.

I paid about $1200 for a developers version of SCO S5R3.2 without X window.
I would love to know how much ESIX S5R4 will be. Now, you can apparently
get a two user version of ESIX S5R3.2 with X for $400 and uucp the gcc 
development tools for free.

Andy

-- 
Andy Burgess
Consulting Software Engineer
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