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From: melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Desktop publishing
Message-ID: <yu5Gybc91@cs.psu.edu>
Date: 26 Mar 91 12:59:19 GMT
References: <1991Mar25.024612.1264@mlb.semi.harris.com>
	<1991Mar26.053352.13091@mendelson.com>
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In-Reply-To: gsm@mendelson.com's message of 26 Mar 91 05:33:52 GMT
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In article <1991Mar26.053352.13091@mendelson.com> gsm@mendelson.com (Geoffrey S. Mendelson) writes:

   The risk in buying Nexts is whether or not YOU think they will remain a
   viable company. That's a matter of speculation and lots of discussion here.
   What ever machine you buy, you are taking a chance on the company going
   out of, or out of the business.  With IBM and Apple I think that chance is 
   small. With Next? (you have to call that one) :-)

So, what happens if NeXT folds in five years?  You use FrameMaker on a
PC, Mac or Sun?  I give up, what happens?  How many five year old Macs
are you using?  I think that the NeXT commmunity is strong enough to
last a few years, even if the company does go belly-up.  After all,
the more computer literate users are buying NeXTs.  It's the less
knowledgeable people who are waiting for people like you to tell them
it's ok to buy NeXTs.


   If you are using the machines as dedicated workstations (ie only for
   documentation) I would get the cheapest platform the stuff runs on.
   Buy usefull things like: lots of printers, full page displays, tape backups:
   scanners, and huge hard disks.  Don't waste you money on computer horespower
   that you won't need.

   I don't see why you would buy a $5000 Next to do what a $2000 Mac or PC
   would do.

How well does FrameMaker, Illustrator, etc run on a $2000 Mac or PC?
Let's add a nice full screen display to that Mac or PC.  How much are
we talking now?

   >6) What features on MAC's and Next's that would be superior to PC's
   >given a publishing orientation.

   None. :-) 

Basically the PC sucks.  Windows still isn't up to par with the Mac
interface.  They're still playing games trying to fit everything into
640K in the PC world.  I use a Model 70 on a daily basis(sometimes
running Windows 3.0), and I can definitely say, w/o reservation, that
the PC sucks.  Try running Word for Windows on a Model 55SX.  And
people still buy the damn things...


   I think the best combination would be a UNIX fileserver, an ethernet network
   MacIIs with full or 2 page monochome displays for set up and text entry,
   MacIIs with color monitors for illustations. Through in lots of printers
   and other usefull stuff and its still alot cheaper than Nexts.

Care to post some numbers backuping up this statement?  I would say
that you're way off.

-Mike