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From: barry@leconte.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: IEEE Spectrum Snubs NeXT
Message-ID: <1991Apr12.205235.9415@math.ucla.edu>
Date: 12 Apr 91 20:52:35 GMT
Sender: news@math.ucla.edu
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Organization: UCLA Dept. of Math, UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
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The latest IEEE Spectrum has a special section devoted
to workstations. In one article, they list a what they
call "representative sample of available workstations",
but they snubbed NeXT in their listing.
(I suppose it is called a sample to avoid offending those left off.)

The list has entries from about 60 different workstation vendors
(seems pretty comprehensive to me) but they left off NeXT!

This wouldn't be so bad, except that

(a) they had entries for the MacIIfx, the Amiga 3000UA and
    many 80486 MS-DOS boxes---these are ``workstations''?

(b) many of the 60 companies are so small I'd never even heard of
    them; I'm sure NeXT does more business than most.

(c) Had they included the NeXTStation, it would have been #3
    in best price (at $4995, beat by only two 486 MS-DOS boxes,
    and even the cheapest of these was $4500), and in the upper half in 
    terms of performance (MIPS, MFLOPS etc). Most of the similar
    performing machines were priced at $8--10,000.

One thing I can say: after seeing this list, its clear what an
incredible deal the NeXTStation is, just judged on raw
performance and price criteria (which are not even my reasons
for getting one!). The Slab, is nearly half the price of
comparable platforms, and even the Color Slab is 20% cheaper.
Once you add in the environment, forget it! Too bad NeXT
wasn't in the list to highlight this discrepancy. I guess
we can hope that the article was prepared prior to the release of the
station, but even the Cube deserved mention.

--
Barry Merriman
UCLA Dept. of Math
UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet)