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From: songer@orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu (Christopher M Songer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Low End NeXTs (was Re: Desktop publishing)
Message-ID: <1991Apr1.200929.17719@noose.ecn.purdue.edu>
Date: 1 Apr 91 20:09:29 GMT
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Jim Mann writes:
>
>Yes, NeXT has the Mac beat for now at the high Mac high end. A NeXT station
>is a better buy than the high-end Mac

... More insightful stuff about pricing and software availability ...

>you need more speed, the SE30 is available for about $2400. 

Jim has a very good point here and is driving at something pretty important.
Next has got the highend mac whipped up as far as price for performance, but it
costs the average guy $5000 to get a machine.

As long as Next keeps this as their low end they will (IMHO, of course)
reamin at best a niche machine and possibly go out of business. Consider,
NeXT is certainly not going to lead MIPS/$$ very long. In fact the Sparc II has
already got the Cube beat hands down.

Additionally while nice applications are out there for the Next, they
are invarialby quite a bit more expensive than their mac counterparts--
probably because of the low number companies are expecting to ship.
I keep reading it being billed as a machine for the power PC user, but
can it really survive on that market?

Maybe Next should consider making a standalone, cheap, 68030 based machine
something that could sell bunches and drive the software market prices down.
The Next seems to suffer from being a mix of workstation and PC rather
than benefit from the mix. It has the high price of a workstation (both
hardware and to a lesser degree software) while not being able to keep
up with the fastest workstations. 

If they were to strip off all the Network stuff from both the hardware and
software, maybe they could make a machine that would be able to appeal to
more people, and still have reasonable performance. (after all, 030's
ran OK with a harddrive.)

Anyway,
-Chris		/*I hope nenver to have to speak for Purdue*/