Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!news.cs.indiana.edu!msi.umn.edu!noc.MR.NET!gacvx2.gac.edu!gacvx2.gac.edu!scott Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: Low End NeXTs (was Re: Desktop publishing) Message-ID: From: scott@texnext.gac.edu (Scott Hess) Date: 2 Apr 91 11:24:57 References: <14483@life.ai.mit.edu> <4753@lectroid.sw.stratus.com><1991Apr1.200929.17719@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> Organization: Gustavus Adolphus College Nntp-Posting-Host: texnext.gac.edu In-reply-to: songer@orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu's message of 1 Apr 91 20:09:29 GMTLines: 50 In article <1991Apr1.200929.17719@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> songer@orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu (Christopher M Songer) writes: In article <1991Apr1.200929.17719@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> songer@orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu (Christopher M Songer) writes: Jim Mann writes: >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. ... 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. First things first - if NeXT were capable of shipping all the machines they now have backordered, and all orders they get from now on same-day or even same-week, they will be quite successful for this year. Even yet they aren't pushing the machines because they aren't yet able to fill demand. I'm not complaining (well, yeah, I am sort of :-), but it's just a fact to live with for awhile. That out of the way, consider the prices of 4M simms. Falling so fast, by about August I'd expect 16M of RAM to be around $500. A 16M '030 system is all most people would ever need. Put it in a slab, and alot of people would be fairly happy with that system - you'd sell about a billion of them into schools as client machines, if you can get the price down in the $2500 range (.edu discount). 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.) I don't think it's worthwhile to strip the network stuff. In software, the network stuff is free - it will barely even slow the machine down, as most stuff doesn't talk with it. In hardware, maybe - but since they've already done all the work for it, it's probably not going to save much. Maybe $100 or $200 for the whole bag. Later, -- scott hess scott@gac.edu Independent NeXT Developer GAC Undergrad "Simply press Control-right-Shift while click-dragging the mouse . . ." "I smoke the nose Lucifer . . . Banana, banana."