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From: ken@gatech.edu (Ken Seefried iii)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.arch
Subject: Re: NeXT press release (very long but interesting)
Message-ID: <17488@gatech.edu>
Date: 14 Oct 88 21:50:09 GMT
References: <5423@juniper.uucp> <72886@sun.uucp> <635@ardent.UUCP> <73003@sun.uucp> <9480@pur-ee.UUCP>
Reply-To: ken@gatech.UUCP (Ken Seefried iii)
Organization: School of Information and Computer Science, Georgia Tech, Atlanta
Lines: 33

In article <9480@pur-ee.UUCP> hankd@pur-ee.UUCP (Hank Dietz) writes:
>(1)	Less than 300M of storage...  that's less than an audio CD.  Does this
>	imply that the format is some brand new magic thing that nobody else
>	will be using?

    The unfortunate thing about optical disks is at the single bit level, 
    they are pretty unreliable.  Typically, 20-30% of the disk is used for
    error detection and correction.  I understand that the NeXT machine 
    uses about 30%.  This wastes a lot of space, but make the disk very
    relaible.  More than likely, no one else is doing quite the same thing.

>(2)	$50 each?  It should be more like $15 each....  I wonder why it isn't?

    Not true.  The optical media for most 5 1/4" WORM drives (eg ISI, Optotech,
    etc.) runs over $100 dollars, and often lists for $200.  $50 is pretty 
    reasonable by comparison...

>(3)	One disk is the minimum you can run with, and we all know it's stupid
>	to try that, but it sure makes the system price seem nicer....  I'd
>	say that the one-disk system is a marketing hack comparable to selling
>	cars with 3 tires and making the fourth one optional:  who's not gonna
>	buy the extra tire?  Most of us will even buy a spare....
>

    Perhaps, perhaps not.  Remeber, an optical disk is not subject to
    head crashes and other magnetic disk problems, so you don't have
    to worry about the power going out and thrashing your data.  That
    is not to say that I won't buy a second drive, but it will be for
    speed, not data reliability...

	ken seefried iii	...!{akgua, allegra, amd, harpo, hplabs, 
	ken@gatech.edu		inhp4, masscomp, rlgvax, sb1, uf-cgrl, 
	ccastks@gitvm1.bitnet	unmvax, ut-ngp, ut-sally}!gatech!ken