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From: damerell@NSS.CS.UCL.AC.UK (Dr R M Damerell, RHBNC)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: request for advice
Message-ID: <8710091256.AA00435@ELI.CS.YALE.EDU>
Date: Fri, 9-Oct-87 08:58:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: ELI.8710091256.AA00435
Posted: Fri Oct  9 08:58:37 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Oct-87 14:03:05 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
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My department (Maths at RHBNC) is hoping to buy a net of about 5 stations &
i would greatly appreciate any advice that you might like to give about
Suns and Apollos, particularly:
how reliable have you found them, and how good is their maintenance?
Any source of cheap software?
Any pitfalls to be avoided?

I should explain that we have 25 full-time staff + several post-grads etc. 
Some are non-users. At present the main types of use seem to be:

run small batch jobs that consume vast amounts of CPU,
Test & debug large programs,
receive large data from other sites & do graphical displays,
interact with large packages (e.g. SPSS)

prepare papers for publication


thank you, Mark