Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!percival!bucket!leonard
From: leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Powerful machines at home (was Re: R.I.P. BYTE:)
Keywords: BYTE, subscription, letter, fed up, POWER USERS
Message-ID: <1031@bucket.UUCP>
Date: 30 Aug 88 06:33:35 GMT
References: <6646@well.UUCP> <5479@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <4617@fluke.COM> <8214@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <2815@teemc.UUCP> <11704@oberon.USC.EDU> <3144@teemc.UUCP>
Reply-To: leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Organization: Rick's Home Grown Unix; Portland, OR
Lines: 56

In article <3144@teemc.UUCP> wayne@teemc.UUCP (/\/\ichael R. \/\/ayne) writes:
<->They don't know that some of us feel that a "small system" is a 16Mhz
<->68020 with 4 Meg of RAM, 700 Meg of hard disk, and 16 serial ports running
<->Unix (like my home machine).  
<>
<>you say all your friends run UN*X at home, and then you describe this machine
<>that would be the envy of any hobbyist and cost a good $7k (price I just
<>dreamed up) that YOU have at home.
<
<	Well, I described the system to my coworkers (at the time I was
<on contract to Ford Motor) and 3 of them also purchased the same machine.
<These were the only people in the building that I thought were serious about
<Unix, they all worked for Ford and none of them were management types
<(just so you know that they had to scrape a bit to come up with the money)
<All of them had some sort of system at home already, CP/M, Unix, Amiga,
<CoCo, Os-9, etc.  Me, I had a bunch (3) Cromemco systems and Cromix was
<not cutting it anymore.  All of us felt that $5K was a great price for what
<we were getting.  The machine is FAST.  One of the other purchasers was the
<instigator on getting the 380 Meg drives, all four of us bought one.  Several
<of them are making noises about buying a second soon.  The computer users
<you know are not as serious about their equipment as the ones I know.
<
<	I consider my system to be slightly advanced for the home but not
<by that much.  It takes a considerable amount of hardware to be able to
<do useful work.  Other people have 20-25 MHz 386 machines running Unix,
<by the time they get done the cost is probably around $5K also.  My original
<point is valid, these ARE being used as home systems but the publishers
<are ignoring us.

The publishers are ignoring you because the number of people that can
afford $10k over a couple of years is too limited to support a magazine!

I make less than $25k/yr. But that still means that my income is *above*
the median! Few people can afford to invest more than they pay in taxes
on a computer! 

I wish I could afford a 386 or 680x0. I'm making do with an Xt clone...
Yes, you can get good deals, but not everyone can write off their 
previous equipment. Out of $4-6k worth of equipment accumulated over
the last 7 years, the only stuff that is still usable with my current
gear are the printers, and they asre crippled by not being "standard".

Yeah, the stuff still works, but the resale value is zip. It's worth
more to me as smart terminals and print servers than I could sell them
for. Such are the perils of committing to the wrong system at the start.
<sigh>

Given the fact that expensive computers are less popular as toys than
expensive cars, I doubt that anything over $5k will *ever* be considered
a "home" system. That doesn't mean that no one will use them at home, just
that it will be unusual.
-- 
Leonard Erickson		...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
CIS: [70465,203]
"I used to be a hacker. Now I'm a 'microcomputer specialist'.
You know... I'd rather be a hacker."