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From: melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: 68040 for the Mac?
Message-ID: <a+aGdxhe@cs.psu.edu>
Date: 4 Feb 91 05:04:11 GMT
References: <1991Jan20.185644.1245@cs.uiuc.edu> <14274@chaph.usc.edu>
	<0bb_V1O00Uh_E3=Bow@andrew.cmu.edu> <1991Feb2.184720.4733@NCoast.ORG>
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In-Reply-To: allbery@NCoast.ORG's message of 2 Feb 91 18:47:20 GMT
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In article <1991Feb2.184720.4733@NCoast.ORG> allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR) writes:

   ...and those of us, who the rabid NeXT advocates just can't seem to get a clue
   on at all, who aren't interested in either big Macs or big NeXTs.  Show me a
   NeXT SE (or even SE/30).

   I'm still carrying on a mail "discussion" with someone who's still trying to
   convince me that I want --- no, NEED --- a NeXT.  The latest go-round had him
   switching to discussing "my LaserWriter".  My response was "*What LaserWriter?
   I have an Okidata 390.  LOW-END, remember?"  To which *his* response was
   something about not dumping on LaserWriters --- he completely missed the fact
   that I don't have or NEED a LaserWriter, so I use a dot-matric printer; this
   despite the fact that I *stressed* LOW-END in my comment to him!

   People who can't focus on the real world are hardly advertizements for NeXT.

That person be me.  Anyway, I wasn't trying to change the subject to
LaserWriters.  You said something about them, I think, and I was just
trying to figure out what you said.  Confused?  So, was(am) I.

The 105MB NeXTstation is NeXT's SE.  I don't think that they will sell
another machine that is less power than that.  The NeXT Station w/o
monitor only costs $2500(edu).  If you look at Apple's price for the
SE/30 18 months ago, you will find that it was around $2300(edu).  The
price of the monitor is a big factor is the total cost.  The
NeXTstation color(4096) w/o monitor costs $3500(I think).  The monitor
costs $2000.

How well will you be able to run System 7.0 on an SE?  Wait until
System 8.0 hits the market.  There is no floating-point coprocessor in
the Classic, IILC, or IIsi.  The Classic can only be expanded to 4MB
of memory, and neither the Classic nor IILC can support virtual
memory.  Apple lowered the prices, but they gave you more tradeoffs.
These machines are going to have a limited lifetime.  NeXT's "SE" is
twice as fast as Apples IIfx, but at their IIcx price.  The NeXT is
competive with workstations in price/performance.  Actually, the NeXT
is a workstation.  More like a personal workstation.  Ah, your saying
to yourself, but I don't need a workstation, it's not worth $1000
more.  Well, I say, wait until the NeXT generation of software hits
the market.  It's just going to get bigger and slower.  Of course the
developers can always leave out some of the functionality so that the
software will perform well on an SE.  Maybe Hypercard 3.0 will have
direct support for color.  It's a shame that they had to leave it out
of 2.0.

Image what software developers can do if memory considerations aren't
important, and you've got CPU to burn.

-Mike