Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!agate!garnet.berkeley.edu!knrgroup From: knrgroup@garnet.berkeley.edu (Raymond group) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: Not another NeXT defector???!!! Message-ID: <1990Nov8.175911.16932@agate.berkeley.edu> Date: 8 Nov 90 17:59:11 GMT References: <46372@apple.Apple.COM> <1990Nov7.212944.11043@agate.berkeley.edu> Sender: usenet@agate.berkeley.edu (USENET Administrator) Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 29 twl@cs.brown.edu (Ted "Theodore" W. Leung) >The issue in system administration is not for single users. This is what I've been saying all along. Yes, NeXT networks require some maintenance like all "Unix" networks. Single user NeXTs, however, don't call for Unix system administration. As for networks, I've never set up a network of Macs so I don't know how easy or tough it is. However, I do know that AppleTalk is the symptom of the disease that is Apple's non-standard networking scheme. If you want to hook up anything other than an Apple to a LocalTalk network, you're going to have to invest in an extra board and accompanying software. The NeXT handles both thin and twisted-pair Ethernet, the network standard for the rest of the world. >Where are you going to take your broken machine to get it fixed... To Businessland or to NeXT, depending on which is closer. By the way, NeXT boasts that because of its state-of-the-art manufacturing plant, NeXTs are the most defect-free computers around. >So what kind of peripherals does Unix make so easy to connect? >...If you add some funky device you need a driver. Precisely. Someone has written a driver for virtually everything under the sun for 4.3BSD Unix. Did you know that there is even a driver for drum memory on the NeXT! (Not that it's particularly useful nowadays.) A Mac also needs drivers for different devices. Thus, a Mac user cannot take a peripheral only originally intended for large Unix machines and connect it to a Mac without going through the pain of writing a driver. Have you ever heard of a Mac user writing a device driver? I don't think so.