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From: eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: CD-ROM Drives
Message-ID: <1769@toaster.SFSU.EDU>
Date: 21 Jun 91 09:25:57 GMT
References: <1991Jun20.200216.5173@hfs.questor.wimsey.bc.ca> <1991Jun20.231036.24324@macc.wisc.edu> <1991Jun21.002247.15086@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: eps@cs.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott)
Organization: San Francisco State University
Lines: 28

I think the recent postings in the thread really miss the mark.
First of all, there's tremendous resentment among early adopters
of NeXT's "future software will only be available on floppy"
policy, and being forced to purchase floppy drives for their
ODful systems in order to continue using them--drives that often
don't work well and are fairly expensive--and not even being
given the option to use the FD controller on the '040 upgrades
they were all but "forced" to buy.  The *last* thing in the
world they want to see is NeXT commit to yet-another-incompatible
storage medium.

Very few people in the Bay Area seem terribly interested in
CD-ROM for a variety of reasons (in no particular order):
+ bad experiences with Apple and Sun CD products
+ slow
+ not user-writable
+ relatively expensive hardware
+ large disparity between CD manufacturing cost and "fair market
  price" compared with just about any other storage media
+ most "interesting" CD-ROMs "out there" are tied to software
  that only runs on MSDOS or Mac OS
+ unattractive licensing terms have become the norm with CD-ROM
  products

Now if NeXT wants to offer software on Exabyte 8200 cartridges,
I'm listening.  :-)

					-=EPS=-