Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!gatech!emory!phssra
From: phssra@emory.uucp (Scott R. Anderson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: A/UX cost
Keywords: A/UX Unix
Message-ID: <2648@emory.uucp>
Date: 16 Feb 88 05:11:22 GMT
References: <1406@csib.csi.UUCP> <2489@tekig4.TEK.COM> <22966@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: phssra@emory.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson)
Organization: Department of Physics, Emory University, Atlanta
Lines: 43

In article <22966@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster) writes:
>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.

Well, if you don't mind backing up your 80MB hard disk onto floppies :-).
I suspect that most people will wish they have a tape drive when it
comes time to preserve the UNIX system that arrives on one of those
oh-so-volatile hard disks from Apple.  Let's see now...Apple's 40 MB
tape drive is listed at $1500, add it on to the $10000 for the A/UX
development system with ethertalk card, and you'll pay $11500, which
is more than a Sun would cost.  And the Sun has a 19" monitor, to boot
(tack on $2000 to get one for the Mac).

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

Well, if this is what you want, then why buy A/UX?  For many people, what
comes standard with Sun UNIX is what they want and need: compilers, graphics,
editors, ethernet, etc.  There may be easier-to-use implementations under
the Mac OS, but the UNIX versions are tried and true, and are either standard
or free/cheap (e.g. TeX is ~$500 for the Mac OS).

I think the rule here is: if you want UNIX, get a Sun; if you want the Mac OS,
but sometimes need UNIX (or vice-versa), get a Mac II.  (Despite my defense
of Sun, I believe there are powerful reasons to get a Mac, the most important
of which is modularity; i.e. you can get a lot of work done without all of
the standard hardware that makes a Sun so expensive.)

*                                     Scott Robert Anderson
  *      **                           gatech!emoryu1!phssra
   *   *    *    **                   phssra@emoryu1.{bitnet,csnet}
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