Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!uunet!pcrat!rick From: rick@pcrat.uucp (Rick Richardson) Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386 Subject: Re: OS costs Message-ID: <1990Sep12.121901.18378@pcrat.uucp> Date: 12 Sep 90 12:19:01 GMT References: <1990Sep02.233606.12859@virtech.uucp> <1114@upvax.UUCP> Reply-To: rick@pcrat.UUCP (Rick Richardson) Organization: PC Research, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ Lines: 42 In article <1114@upvax.UUCP> stevewa@upvax.UUCP (Steve Ward) writes: >>> The only thing wrong with this is the capital cost of delivering a copy >>> of the OS is very small. >>You forgot support. >But now Interactive is charging extra for support. >People don't like having to pay for something they used to getfree. But large companies do like it, or so they say. A recent PC magazine article by Jim Seymour discusses this issue. Support is being unbundled by many (most?) companies so that users who don't need support or who have in-house support departments won't have to pay for something they don't use. For a long time now, there has been a 'support subsidy' paid for (but not used by) the Fortune 500 companies. Unbundle support and the subsidy disappears. This makes Fortune 500 companies happy, and the small company unhappy. We've got a lot of small companies here. In theory, support prices are now supposed to reflect actual costs plus a profit, and the product alone should cost less. Since vendors seem to always make these changes when issuing a new, uncomparable release of something, its hard to say if the software ever really gets cheaper. I doubt it. Also, this unbundling of support is a fairly recent thing within the PC marketplace, where products are well established and are high volume. One has to wonder if the UNIX marketplace is premature in following this lead at this time. -Rick -- Rick Richardson | Looking for FAX software for UNIX/386 ??? Ask About: |Mention PC Research,Inc.| FaxiX - UNIX Facsimile System (tm) |FAX# for uunet!pcrat!rick| FaxJet - HP LJ PCL to FAX (Send WP,Word,Pagemaker...)|Sample (201) 389-8963 | JetRoff - troff postprocessor for HP LaserJet and FAX|Output