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From: melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger)
Subject: Re: New HP machines Bad News for NeXT??
In-Reply-To: hardy@golem.ps.uci.edu's message of 21 May 91 00: 46:07 GMT
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	<HARDY.91May20174558@golem.ps.uci.edu>
Date: Tue, 21 May 1991 01:19:18 GMT
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In article <HARDY.91May20174558@golem.ps.uci.edu> hardy@golem.ps.uci.edu (Meinhard E. Mayer (Hardy)) writes:

   As a user of both HP and NeXT I must come to the defense of HP.
   First they do run unix -- HP-UX (which is much better documented and
   supported than Mach/NextStep; a call to the HP-Support line gets you a
   fix within an hour, rahter than being shrugged off to your
   Campus-Rep).

HP-UX seems to be different enough, that pulling programs off the net
and compiling them is nontrivial.  However, I'm willing to be very
forgiving of a 56 mip machine(cheap Snake).  HP pulled off a major
coup with the Snakes, but from what I hear their OS is a major
drawback.  OSF/1 is supposed to be offered later this year, which
should help them.

   The Motif user interface is quite nice, and even the 50 MHz 68030
   boxes have a performance comparable to the 25 MHz NeXT -- on the few
   programs I tested on both the differences were within 20% only).
   Until recently, the NeXT was certainly the leader in
   price/performance, at the lower end of the price scale. If the new
   HP-s (or are they the 9000/400 series at a lower price?) are indeed
   available at a price comparable to the NeXTStation, this will force
   NeXT to become a little better attuned to its users.  There is, of
   course, room for both machines: the NeXT lends itself better to be
   used as a "Home Workstation" than the HP-boxes do;  the extended
   version comes "fully equipped" with TeX, gnu-emacs, and some of the
   other FSF software, which require nontrivial work to compile under
   HP-UX. Whether NeXTStep or Motif is a better-looking interface is a
   matter of taste; I like them both. And let's not forget that the
   predecessor of NextStep was developed under HP-UX at HPLabs 
   (under the name RMG), and then given/sold to Stepstone.

Actually, the introduction of HP's machines could end up really
helping NeXT.  The "Professional Workstation" market has been news to
many people.  They thought it was something invented by NeXT.  A $5K
NeXT seemed to be stuck b/w the workstation and the PCs markets.  Now
they belong in a market that is about to grow a rapid pace.

-Mike