From: utzoo!decvax!cca!csin!Ucca
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: Re re requiring vs. banning college equipment
Article-I.D.: csin.205
Posted: Sat Oct 30 01:54:25 1982
Received: Sat Oct 30 03:23:47 1982

Ahem.  By order of magnitude, I meant "power of ten".
Dunno if that's the usual usage.  Oh, well.
So, working from your 1971 budget of $100/yr, that's $4000 - $40k.
Sure enough, the 8k PDP-12 (like a PDP-8) that we used then cost $40k.
Somebody just sent me mail pointing out that textbooks cost about $30
today.  Yup, that's what I (or rather DEC) pay today.
(Oh, above, I compared 4 years' worth of book budget to 1 machine.)
$30 x 4 courses x 2 sememsters x 4 years gives $960.
I'm sorry, I don't call that adequate to buy a machine that I would
want to do serious work, study, or thinking on.
Of course, if, as you say, the 'donating' company gives some kind of
break that gets the price down to the $800 or so that you mentioned,
yah, we're back in the game.
Now, I suppose that doubling the cost of miscellaneous expenses might
be considered justifiable, depends on the school and its tuition costs,
and room and board and all.
Put it this way:
I have wanted my own computer since way back then.
I only have one now because DEC (my employer) had some funny little
LSI-11 systems that weren't selling well, so they sold them to the
employees for a pittance;  my configuration has 60kb main memory,
2 single-sided floppies, and a *DECwriter*, all for $750!
After taking into account mortgage payments and all those good things,
I decided I could squeak in a two-year loan because I had just finished
paying off my college loan from 1975 (yet another school).
But buy one of the various systems on the market today?  Not a chance.
Can't touch 'em.  For under $1000 I can get a machine that is missing
a good many keys, or missing a good deal of memory, or missing what-have-
you.  Or I could spring for $3500 to get the same amount of main and disk
storage, CRT, printer, and modem as I have now.  Note that my CRT and modem
are loaners.
Bleah!
Well, there are the figures I was using, and the assumptions I as making
about the power of the system.  I guess I'll go read some more now.
-- Kenn