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From: petersor@frith.msu.edu (Rick Peterson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: HP-UX features
Message-ID: <1991May24.152621.9993@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
Date: 24 May 91 15:26:21 GMT
Sender: news@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu
Organization: Michigan State University, College of Engineering
Lines: 35
Originator: petersor@frith.egr.msu.edu

I have just been catching up on new from the past couple of weeks.  It seems
that the primary justification from HP for failing to include useful features
in HP-UX is ROI (this argument is explicit in postings w.r.t. disk partitions
and terminal support in SAM).  HP, what is the cost of the lost sales due
to the failure to include features your users want/need?

A couple of years back we bought a bunch of HP 9000/3xx workstations
instead of Sun's (which we already had a lot of), and a little more
recently some 400t/425's.  The primary reason for this was the low cost
negotiated with HP.  Since then we have regreted the decision due to the
lack of needed features and difficulty to manage (vs. other UNIX OS's).
We are once again looking at purchasing some additional machines (as we
often are).  This time HP's will be a hard sell whatever the price.

The graphics performance is great, and the price/performance of the Snakes
sure is tempting, but the lack of needed features in HP-UX and the difficulty
to manage makes HP a difficult choice.  HP, what will it cost you to loose
these and other sales?  What will it cost you that students here and
elsewhere, tomorrow's customers, are learning from first hand experience
the failings of HP-UX (in our labs here, Sun's are almost always in use,
often with other people waiting, while at the same time most of our HP's
sit idle - sort of reminds you of the dog food taste test commercials :-) )? 

Rather than trying to justify based on ROI the failure to include features
your users need, you might be better off to start listening to your
customers.  I suspect that we would gladly pay somewhat increased prices to
get HP's high performance graphics and the performance of the Snakes IF HP-UX
met our needs in terms of features and quality.

Rick Peterson			|	petersor@egr.msu.edu
College of Engineering		|	(517) 355-7435
Michigan State University	|

The opinions expressed are my own and do not represent the opinions of
Michigan State University.