Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uwm.edu!psuvax1!news From: melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Will NeXT survive? Grow with the times? Message-ID: Date: 6 May 91 21:55:18 GMT References: <1991Apr29.144421.19819@oakhill.sps.mot.com> <-U3BJU9@xds13.ferranti.com> Sender: news@cs.psu.edu (Usenet) Organization: Penn State Computer Science Lines: 30 In-Reply-To: peter@ficc.ferranti.com's message of 6 May 91 14:14:00 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: sunws5.sys.cs.psu.edu In article <-U3BJU9@xds13.ferranti.com> peter@ficc.ferranti.com (peter da silva) writes: The NeXTstation costs 5 grand. I can practically buy a new car for that. Check out the price of an SE/30 two years ago. Guess what it costs $5000. How much does a 386 computer from IBM or Compaq cost today? And a 486? If I'm not mistaken a Model 90 costs around 10K. You could get a fancy car for that much :-). The competitors for the NeXT in the real world cost O(2 grand). Oh sure, it's pretty fast (right at the low end of RISC chips), but what's the market? From my copy of the NeXT software catalog, it's business and engineering. These people already have Macs and DOS machines (and the 486 and 68040 are pretty close, so you get the same Specmarks), or if they're using workstations they're going for the high end of the RISC world... not a machine only a little slower than a Sparc. Which computers can you buy from IBM, Compaq, Apple, Sun, Dec, etc, that cost $2000? The NeXT is still competitive in SPEC/$, something that not many of the PC makers can claim. A SSII goes for $14K, so it's not in the same market as the NeXT. In short, you are comparing computers without regard to how they fit into the market. Something else you aren't considering, a 486 machine running DOS + Windows is not going to be as versatile as the NeXT. Well, perhaps I should wait for DOS 5.0's imminent release before I say such a nasty thing. Maybe Microsoft will surprise me. -Mike