Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ub!uhura.cc.rochester.edu!rochester!garrett
From: garrett@cs.rochester.edu (Bill Garrett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga vs NeXT
Keywords: Decisions, decisions!!!
Message-ID: <1990Oct31.192547.23318@cs.rochester.edu>
Date: 31 Oct 90 19:25:47 GMT
References: <405@shrike.AUSTIN.LOCKHEED.COM> <1990Oct31.175023.2697@cbnewsl.att.com> <11287@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Reply-To: garrett@cs.rochester.edu (Bill Garrett)
Organization: University of Rochester Computer Science Dept
Lines: 30


The 3000 is cheaper with educational pricing. 

Two points which need to be mentioned is the Next's lack of color.
And seeming inability to upgrade to color, NeXt still hasn't said
that an upgrade route would be offered.  Another thing that needs to be
brought out is that NeXt's system will not fit on the supplied hard
disk.  You get the Unix variant MACH but not much else!  You can't fit
the compiler and includes and you can't fit NeXt's famed software
development environment.  All that free software is also not on the
hard drive, because of space limitations.  You need at least a 200
- 300 meg hard drive to make the NeXt machine really fun to use.  Once
you get the extra hard drive (and pay the extra money, NeXt wants over
$1000 for the bigger harddrive) the only way to get the rest of the system
is through NeXt.  They will gladly send you an optical disk with the rest
of the system on it.  But wait, the new NeXtstation doesn't have a built in
optical disk drives.  So you need to be connected somehow to someone who
does or buy one.  We wanted to connect the NeXtstation to a network of
sparc-stations in the lab.  After all the Next has standard ethernet.  
Welllll the NextStation has standard thin-wire ethernet.  The suns here
use thick wire ethernet.  Quick call to next, what should we do, Next's
answer "Buy a transceiver", "great how much", "oh, about $1000".  Okay
so we'll get one, could come in handy later anyway.  So the student who
wanted the next goes and plops down his cash.  When do I get the computer
he asks.  Maybe by Christmas he's told.  Come on guys, enough is enough.

-- 
Bill Garrett			ARPA: garrett@cs.rochester.edu
University of Rochester		UUCP: {decvax,rutgers}!rochester!garrett
Rochester  NY  14627		VOX:  (716) 275-5605