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From: dlw@Atherton.COM (David Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Low End NeXTs (was Re: Desktop publishing)
Message-ID: <34936@athertn.Atherton.COM>
Date: 2 Apr 91 03:55:44 GMT
References: <1991Apr1.200929.17719@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> <14483@life.ai.mit.edu> <4753@lectroid.sw.stratus.com>
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Reply-To: dlw@Atherton.COM (David Williams)
Organization: Atherton Technology -- Sunnyvale, CA
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songer@orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu (Christopher M Songer) writes:
>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.)

NO! Leave the networking in. Just take the NeXTStation pizza box and 
use the 030/25 setup[cpu/fpu/dsp] in and sell for $2495. NeXT's 
factory would probably get swamped with orders! Look at how many of us snapped
up cubes at the Businessland Fire sales. That sort of price point would grab
in many who were evaluating getting the Macintoshes in or considering PCs
especially with SoftPC and the fact that the 2.88M drive will read DOS disks.

The real question is can NeXT make enough money even if the sales volume
is high? They need to have good enought profit margins to stay alive. 

They'll also have to move to a RISC cpu to be considered a player in the
high end marketplace. Hp has finally realized this and has announced
their 56mips for $12k RISC box. So NeXT has to choose carefully as to
which chipset they go 
with.

1) MIPS  (DEC, SGI, various Japanese & Korean vendors,Compaq)
2) SPARC (Sun, Solbourne,various Japanese & Korean vendors)
3) RIOS  (IBM)
4) HP-PA (Hewlett Packard and various Japanese & Korean vendors)
5) Motorola (Data General, various Japanese vendors)

Moto's 88k may NOT be the optimal choice given their poor track record on
delivery of the 040. They are single source whereas you've got several 
manufacturers whomping on each other in SPARC intl for example competing
to make and deliver chipsets. On the other hand Steve J. could cut a hard
deal with Moto since all the major workstation vendors have abandoned them.



David Williams