Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!caen!uflorida!reef.cis.ufl.edu!bb
From: bb@reef.cis.ufl.edu (Brian Bartholomew)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: Dream System
Keywords: Rolls Royce, but poor marketing...
Message-ID: <25849@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>
Date: 11 Dec 90 03:35:47 GMT
References: <54@gauss.mmlai.UUCP>
Sender: news@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU
Organization: UF CIS Dept.
Lines: 92


In article <54@gauss.mmlai.UUCP> you write:

> I've posted this so amny other places, I might as well post it here
> too.  We have $150,000 to spend on hardware for a computer graphics
> visualization system.  Currently, we have an Apollo netwrok with about
> 25 nodes.  We're looking to do animation of finite element analysis
> results and CFD stuff.  Obviously, at this dollar level we'll get a lot
> of CPU speed.

> What would you buy? HP, Apollo, SGI, SUN, STARDENT?  How would you
> configure your dream system.


Usually I agree with what Tony says, but in this case I almost
completely disagree.  Here's why:

The *first* rule of computer purchasing is to select the software you
want to run, then find a computer that runs it.  Fast hardware is
useless without powerful and flexible software to use it.  *Useless*!

For a start, compare the size of Sun's SPARCware catalog (about 1200
pages, three applications per page) with HP's equivalent software
catalog.  If you can find a close enough match and are happy with the
HP selections, fine.  Just remember that you are choosing from a
substantially smaller pool of applications than you would with Sun.

[Tony paraphrased: The HP 800 series with graphics accelleration is
the fastest machine this week]

Let's see SPECmarks, not MIPS!  What do MIPS mean when comparing
between RISC (SPARC) and CISC (800?) architectures?  Let's see
performance comparisons between equally-priced Sun and HP
configurations.

[Tony paraphrased: The 835 deals better with multiple CPU-intensive
users on the same machine]

I have no data to indicate if this is true or not, and in fact sounds
like a tuning problem (i.e. don't run an animation machine on 8 megs
of RAM).  Assuming that it is real, is this capability useful, given
that this guy needs a head for each seat, to display animation on?

> Another marketing secret at HP is the stability of HP-UX, HPs' UNIX
> variant.  Very easy to use, and it works great (as long as you use
> Suns' manuals to figure out UUCP :-)  The local HP support (at least
> for the moment, the recession may change things) is SUPERB!!!!

As long-time readers of this group know, this is one of my favorite
complaints about HP workstations.  HP-UX is consistantly behind SunOS
in terms of features, most notably networking features.

Within the first week of getting our new HP 9000/345 workstations with
the pre-installed software (including X Release 2 - yum-yum), we had
managed to crash or hang 3 of the 7 machines, at least once.  At the
time, we were taking particular care not to do anything unreasonable
on them, as we didn't have backups of the disk (and the OS tapes
failed upon installation).

I don't know about Tony's area, but at the University of Florida (the
premier Florida Engineering University, perhaps one of the big 3 or 4
in the Southeast) the HP reps are incredibly uninformed about the
workstation product line.  It is extremely difficult to impossible to
get such things as patch tapes out of our sales reps.  The
telephone-based tech support is much better, but usually we have
questions that go over their heads.  And,they keep referring us to the
local reps for patch tapes (!)  The local Sun reps are rather more
clued-in, but perhaps not overwhelmingly so.  However, the existance
of Sun-manager mailing lists, informal ftp sites for patches, and
other such net resources makes expert support just 8 hours and a mail
message away.  I know that HP is attempting to start participating in
this milieu, but they are very far from there yet.

Besides, it seems that a very large percentage of the software posted
on the net has been developed on Sun 3 or 4 computers.  That saves an
awful lot of porting time when that hot new piece of free data-
visualization software comes NNTP'ing down the net.  Examples: KHOROS
(~100 Megs of source), NCSA-something.

[Tony paraphrased: buy cheap, slightly used or demo]

I agree, as long as you get the warranty, like he suggests.

One last note: anyone who cares to dispute these points should attack
my facts, not my attitude.


--
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian Bartholomew	UUCP:       ...gatech!uflorida!mathlab.math.ufl.edu!bb
University of Florida	Internet:   bb@math.ufl.edu