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From: bzs@Encore.COM (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Re:spiffy terminals
Message-ID: <4692@xenna.Encore.COM>
Date: 17 Jan 89 21:31:58 GMT
References: <9357@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1800004@spdyne>
Organization: Encore Computer Corp, Marlboro, MA
Lines: 37
In-reply-to: root@spdyne.UUCP's message of 14 Jan 89 01:35:00 GMT
Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.41.15 of Tue Jun  9 1987 on xenna (berkeley-unix)


>    On the other hand, Have you ever considered doing what we did for our
>users? (at my Current company), we just bought them AST 286'es, they cost
>about the same as the "spiffy" terminals.. and they Blow them away in
>versitillity!  If they later decide that they want to do a little lotus
>spreadsheet, no problem!.. I think that they costs us about $2400.
>
>    I doubt that I would ever pay that much for "just a terminal"!
>
>        -Chert Pellett

This is of course absolutely valid in many situations (buying PC's or
Workstations rather than some new-fangled fancy terminal.)

What you're not taking into account is the prospect of supporting, oh,
500 or 1000 PC's (eg. backups, installing new software, dealing with
disk problems etc) which can be a royal headache when all you really
want is access to a decent spreadsheet, wordprocessor and some data
base.

Put the other way, setting up and maintaining (ie. continuing costs) a
PC when all you really want is a fancy terminal is paying too much
(probably on an office of a dozen folks running around with the latest
floppy and phones ringing off the hook cuz "my computer is broke!
help!" etc., terminals break of course, but at least you're a little
more sure [after telling the person to power cycle it] that it needs a
repairperson and not a new USER who remembers to put the floppy disk
in right-side up or stops deleting his/her AUTOEXEC.BAT to make more
room for memos...)

It's all a matter of your situation, I'm not talking in universals
here or telling you you're wrong (unless you're running 1,000 such
users, in which case you may very well be wrong from the point of view
of efficiency), what works for small shops rarely makes sense in large
shops, and vice-versa.

	-Barry Shein, ||Encore||