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From: meyer@WWIII.UUCP (Mike Meyer)
Newsgroups: mod.computers.workstations
Subject: Re: Low, Medium power Unix machine
Message-ID: <8603052141.AA02506@wwiii.tcville.uucp>
Date: Wed, 5-Mar-86 16:41:21 EST
Article-I.D.: wwiii.8603052141.AA02506
Posted: Wed Mar  5 16:41:21 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Mar-86 05:14:36 EST
References: <8603022205.AA04303@bu-cs.ARPA>
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Organization: ISPL, Hughes AC, El Segundo, CA
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In article <8603022205.AA04303@bu-cs.ARPA> you write:
>Could/Would you send me some opinions on the UNIX PC.  I am about
>ready to get a machine, but have not yet decided if I want to get a
>UNIX machine or a MS-DOS(PC-DOS) machine.
>

I've owned a PC7300 since last May, and I recommend the machine quite
heartily. At the time, the only thing that came close to it in price/
performance was the IBM AT.  I found, however, that the 7300 was more
cost-effective by the time you bought an AT with a 20MB hard disk, a
modem, and software.  For 500 dollars, you can get the UNIX
Utilities, which includes a c compiler, two debuggers, editors,
nroff, lex, yacc, awk, the Korn shell, and lots of other stuff.

My particular machine has 1MB RAM and a 20MB hard disk (essential -
UNIX and the Utilities take up 7 or 8 MB).  I paid list at the time
(about 6K, plus printer, tax, and the Utilities), but I've seen the
prices go down in the LA area such that you can get a comparable
machine for about 4400 dollars now.

The machine has a lot of good points. It is very fast on data
crunching, the built-in modem is nicely integrated with the system
software (a very slick communications package), it has an excellant
monitor, and it has the best keyboard I've found.  I'd recommend
stuffing it with 2 megs of memory - it swaps a lot with one, and I've
heard that 1.5 megs and up makes a big difference in speed.  There
are a lot of third party things available for it now,too, like big
hard disks.  Third party software is picking up.

As far as the UNIX/MS-DOS quandry, it really depends on your intended
use.  I bought the machine to learn more about system programming and
to program in C (lots of other languages are available, too).  I
consider UNIX to be more of a REAL operating system, and I think the
programming environment is superior to anything I've seen for MS-DOS
machines.  I wasn't impressed with Xenix.  However, if you don't
expect to program much and you want a machine to do fairly standard
applications, like word processing, databases, etc., you might want
to get an MS-DOS machine.  I'd recommend a Compaq Deskpro, myself.
You can get them rather cheaply these days, too, at least in LA.

I hope you find this helpful.  If you have any questions about the
7300, please feel free to E-mail me.  My experience has been that
sales people are not very knowledgable about this machine at all,
even from AT&T.  You can get some advice about the 7300 from people
in net.micro.att as well.  Do shop around, and check out the
third-party options.

Mike Meyer
Hughes Aircraft EDSG
Image and Signal Processing Lab
El Segundo, CA

(213)616-8141
...!seismo!scgvaxd!tcville!meyer