Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!tness7!texbell!bigtex!milano!cs.utexas.edu!sm.unisys.com!ucla-cs!admin.cognet.ucla.edu!casey
From: casey@admin.cognet.ucla.edu (Casey Leedom)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Monitors: What Next?
Message-ID: <16891@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 17 Oct 88 21:57:00 GMT
References: <15572@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU
Reply-To: casey@cs.ucla.edu (Casey Leedom)
Organization: UCLA Cognitive Science Program
Lines: 33

| From: 128a-3aj@e260-3b.berkeley.edu (Jonathan Dubman)
| 
| I would never want to get stuck with any one monitor.  One thing that
| REALLY bothers me, unless someone justifies it soon, is that the mouse
| and keyboard plug into the monitor.  This is the source of my worry about
| proprietary monitors.  What's the idea?  I don't accept the argument that
| it saves a foot of thin cable.

  As I understand it, one of the major `ergonomic' goals of the beast was
to reduce the typical rat's nest of wires that most computers require.
With NeXT, you're down to two: 1. power cable between The Cube and 2. one
communications cable between The Cube and The Monitor.  If you connect to
an ethernet, add a laser printer, etc. obviously you have more cables,
but there's really nothing that can be done about that.

  When you consider that (2) contains 1. monitor/keyboard/mouse power, 2.
monitor output, 3. keyboard input, 4. mouse input, 5. stereo sound output,
and 6. microphone input, you can well understand why he went with one
cable for that instead of six.

  And, I imagine that if NeXT doesn't get around to offering some
specific monitor capability that you want (higher resolution B&W, high
performance color, etc.), there will be plenty of third party people
willing to fill the gap.

Casey

--------
I have a friend who is planning on voting for Bush because ``Bush looks
like a Party Man - someone who will follow whatever the Party Line is.''
Now, while this was very perceptive of my friend (Bush seems to be
willing to say anything to get elected - no matter how at odds with what
he may have said before), I call this a bug, not a feature ...