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From: punia@uvm-cs.UUCP (David T. Punia)
Newsgroups: net.college,net.cse
Subject: Why force the AT&T at UVM?
Message-ID: <380@uvm-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-May-85 10:42:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: uvm-cs.380
Posted: Fri May  3 10:42:03 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 5-May-85 02:19:29 EDT
Organization: University of Vermont
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Xref: watmath net.college:721 net.cse:382


	So why MUST these poor kids be FORCED to buy THAT micro?

	At least partly because of the power of the almighty buck. In
order to obtain the magnitude of discount that was negotiated, AT&T, and
any other vendor, I imagine, needed some guarantee of volume.  This is
the way things work in business.  That the machines are available at the
price they are makes me wonder why anyone would WANT to choose a different
machine!

	OK, so what about the kids who already have their own micros?

	Sorry, courseware being developed for the AT&T is taking advantage
of it's 640 X 400 graphics resolution.  As far as I'm concerned, any
high school kid who already owns a PC of this class is not hurting financially
to begin with.  Besides, he/she can probably sell it for what the AT&T will
cost.  It should certainly NOT be UVM's responsibility to function as a used 
equipment dealer.  I'm a Rainbow fan myself (let's not talk about it), but
it seems silly, given the tremendous amount of software that's going to be
generated, not to have an AT&T.  As of now, I don't know of any AT&T
compatibles, so it's a non-issue. Anybody want to buy a used Rainbow?

	Why the AT&T?

	I was not on the advisory committee, so I can only speculate. It's
faster and comes with far more standard equipment than the "standard" it
emulates.  It gives you seven compatible expansion slots that can be made
into 16-bit slots.  Main memory can be fully expanded to 640K without using
any of the expansion slots.  This leaves plenty of room for upgrades, including
new processor boards, to help fend off obsolescence.  And AT&T is not
likely to go belly-up in the foreseeable future.  Bell Labs is a pretty
strong support group, and support has been guaranteed.


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David T. Punia, Dept. of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering,
The University of Vermont, Burlington, VT   05405  
802-656-3330

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