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From: eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXT AppleTalk
Message-ID: <998@toaster.SFSU.EDU>
Date: 1 Nov 90 23:27:53 GMT
References: <1990Oct28.020457.10908@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <1990Oct31.144607.25123@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <1990Oct31.114439.133@gacvx2.gac.edu>
Reply-To: eps@cs.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott)
Organization: San Francisco State University
Lines: 23

In article <1990Oct31.114439.133@gacvx2.gac.edu> dan@gacvx2.gac.edu writes:
>          It would be tough to justify spending $1600 (FastPath at edu pricing
>levels) for a board that would hook a single NeXT to an AppleTalk.

We found it tough to justify spending for a single FastPath to
connect many, many NeXTs to many, many Macs.  My department
finally did it, and no regrets.  The cost "per machine" is quite
reasonable, and the performance is far better than we expected
(although we still prefer dropping Ethernet cards in Macs).
EtherTalk and MacTCP are much better than plain ol' LocalTalk.

Sometimes I think the only reason we still bother with LocalTalk
is for the LaserWriters-that-won't-go away.  I'd love to use the
NTX SCSI port, but apparently Apple doesn't support it for
anything but a font disk.  The NeXT laser printers are *much*
nicer, but the "only 13 fonts" limitation is crippling, and
Mr. Blue Pencil still won't approve purchasing Adobe Plus Pack
("why spend $500 for what you can already do with a
LaserWriter?").  The Mac users are chuckling because they can
get screen fonts for 33 *families* for free by anonymous FTP.
And you wonder why we're still doing DTP on Macs...

					-=EPS=-