From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhuxt!mhuxj!cbosgd!mark
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: Re: How can they do this
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.2739
Posted: Thu Oct 21 22:14:56 1982
Received: Fri Oct 22 02:56:07 1982
Reply-To: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton)
References: burdvax.242

Oh, come now.  A college education costs in 5 figures.  Another $1000 for
a personal computer won't make that big a difference.  I think it's a
great idea.  Think of it as an expensive textbook.  With that in mind, for
the impoverished student who just can't afford it, there are lots of
alternatives that will no doubt spring up:

(1) Buy it but sell it to an incoming freshman after you complete the course.
(2) Rent one from the bookstore.
(3) Share one with your roommate or a larger number of people.
(4) Go to the library and use one of the ones there.
(5) Use a public computer somewhere else, say in a computer room at the
    computer center, or in your dorm.  (We all have spent many long hours
    in terminal rooms at comp centers, and lately it's common for a dorm
    to have a terminal for their students to use.)

The instructor could have you buy a $5 floppy with whatever information is
needed written on it at the beginning of the semester.  If the computers
had modems, you could have them dial up weekly (even daily at 4 AM if you
had an auto-dialer) for updated assignments, announcements, test data,
to turn in programs, etc.

I can't believe that they force you to buy a computer, merely that they
assume you have access to one as often as you want it (like a textbook).
What are they going to do - make you turn in your purchase receipt?

I've seen lines at the Berkeley Computer center that take 6 hours to get
to the front of, then you get one hour of connect time at 3 AM on an 11/70
that is so overloaded that you can't get any work done.  (They were making
the days of keypunches and FORTRAN look good!)  I think personal computers
are a welcome improvement.

I'm still waiting for a personal computer I'd recommend that my friends buy.
So far they all want you to program them in BASIC.  How come there isn't
one for under $500 that you program in Pascal?  I'd be interested to hear
from people what the least expensive Pascal personal computer system is,
and what the prospects of that coming down soon are.  (Maybe we should go
form a startup and make one if nobody already is...)