Xref: utzoo comp.sys.misc:1822 comp.os.misc:612 comp.misc:3818 comp.arch:6663
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tektronix!percival!nerd
From: nerd@percival.UUCP (Michael Galassi)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc,comp.os.misc,comp.misc,comp.arch
Subject: Re: The NeXT machine has been announced! (long)
Message-ID: <1403@percival.UUCP>
Date: 16 Oct 88 17:46:39 GMT
References: <360@elan.UUCP> <5806@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <9265@bigtex.cactus.org>
Reply-To: nerd@percival.UUCP (Michael Galassi)
Followup-To: comp.sys.misc
Organization: Percy's UNIX, Portland, OR.
Lines: 26

In article <9265@bigtex.cactus.org> james@bigtex.cactus.org (James Van Artsdalen) writes:

>Each one of those 256MB disks costs almost as much as a floppy disk
>*drive*.  How do you propose NeXT to economically distribute updates &
>software?  Certainly not on a $50 optical disk!

Why not?  You send your original system disk to NeXT (you only work off
a backup anyway, right?), they erase the original material and return it
to you with the updated software on it.  Also keep in mind that if our
cost on the disk is $50, NeXT's cost on it is $50/4=$12.50 if they use
the same rule of thumb ratios we use where I work, i.e. customer cost
is 4 times our manufacturing cost.  I beleive that a single 27512 (512
KBit EPROM) costs on the order of $10 in 100s, not that much less than
a 256 MByte disk.
Another thought comes to mind, a non-erasable optical disk can be had
for $1 or 2 after you cover the fixed overhead of recording it, could
updates be shiped on a non-erasable disk (discus volgaris? :-) that
could be copied onto the real disk by the customer?  I don't know if
one could make the drives in the NeXT read any sort of cheap disk but
if one could that would solve all the distribution problems.  Anyone
out there in the know?
-michael
-- 
        Michael Galassi     | If my opinions happen to be the same as
...!tektronix!percival!nerd | my employer's it is ONLY a coincidence,
...!sun!nosun!percival!nerd | of course coincidences OFTEN DO happen.