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From: mikeg@dali.gatech.edu (Mike Gourlay)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: Dream System (sort of)
Keywords: silly silly silly stupid
Message-ID: <1990Dec17.113543@dali.gatech.edu>
Date: 17 Dec 90 16:35:43 GMT
References: <1990Dec14.095519.14818@hellgate.utah.edu> <BB.90Dec15033453@beach.cis.ufl.edu>
Sender: news@prism.gatech.EDU
Reply-To: mikeg@dali.gatech.edu (Mike Gourlay)
Organization: Georgia Tech
Lines: 34

In article <BB.90Dec15033453@beach.cis.ufl.edu>, bb@beach.cis.ufl.edu
(Brian Bartholomew) writes:

|> In article <1990Dec14.095519.14818@hellgate.utah.edu>
|> mjb%hoosier.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Mark Bradakis) writes:
|> 
|> > We have a student lab with 40 machines in it.  Half are HP 400t
|> > machines and half are Suns, a mix of Sparcstation 1 and SLCs or
some
|> > such.  Usually when I go over there and the lab is only half used,
|> > nearly all the students are sitting in front of the Hewlett
Packard
|> > machines, only one or two are using Suns.  Remember that TV
commercial
|> > where the two people are asking "Which is the best computer?"  It
is
|> > indeed the one that people use.
|> 
|> Here are some easy questions to ask, that might clarify the
situation:
|> 
|> Are the HP's color and the Sun's mono (SLC's are)?
|> Is there software used locally that only runs on the HP's?
|> Is the local support and system defaults concentrated on the HP's?

Some more such questions:

Does speed not matter?  The Sparcs are much (10x?) faster.
Are the HP's the only machines with local drives? If the Suns are using
	remote-mounted drives (diskless Suns), then they'll seem slower.
Do you do anything with multi-threaded processing?
Do you use/program UNIX as part of the projects that use the machines?
Do the students program X?
Do they use X?