Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!gatech!bloom-beacon!husc6!bbn!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!ucbvax!dewey.soe.berkeley.edu!oster
From: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: A/UX cost
Keywords: A/UX Unix
Message-ID: <22966@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 13 Feb 88 10:29:17 GMT
References: <1406@csib.csi.UUCP> <2489@tekig4.TEK.COM>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster)
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley
Lines: 26

In article <2489@tekig4.TEK.COM> bradn@tekig4.UUCP (Bradford Needham) writes:
>In article <1406@csib.csi.UUCP> jwhitnel@csib.UUCP (Jerry Whitnell) writes:
>>A/UX... comes preconfigured on either an internal ($4,879)
>>or an external ($5,549) ... upgrade package....

>Haven't they priced Sun's lately?

I have. a Sun 3/60 is roughly the same price as a Mac II. You get the Unix
for free, but it comes on a tape. So, you need to buy a tape drive. You
can't do anything with it unless you also buy a disk. Conclusion:
$ for Sun 3/60+disk+tape+unix > $ for MacII + disk + unix.

Of course if you are buying two copies of the hardware, the Sun becomes
cheaper because they can each share the tape drive and system software
over their built-in ethernet. 

But by the time you've bought decent desktop
publishing, word processing, spreadsheet, and database software the Mac IIs
are cheaper again.

Conclusion: it depends on what you want to do with them which is going to
work out cheaper. The siganture says it all:

--- David Phillip Oster            --A Sun 3/60 makes a poor Macintosh II.
Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --A Macintosh II makes a poor Sun 3/60.
Uucp: {uwvax,decvax,ihnp4}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu