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From: dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXT concerns
Message-ID: <400@garcon.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 26 Jan 89 23:14:13 GMT
References: <4474@umd5.umd.edu> <32681@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Sender: news@garcon.cso.uiuc.edu
Reply-To: dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu.UUCP (Steve Dorner)
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In article <32681@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> J Greely <jgreely@cis.ohio-state.edu> writes:
>I don't think of the NeXT machine as a workstation, at least not in
>the manner most people think of it.  Some people have called it a
>Sun-killer, which is nonsense.  The orientation of the product will
>put it into places where people would buy Macs, not Suns.

The following are University prices.  The Sun prices are from the latest
Sun price list (let me remind you, this is AFTER discount).  For the
sake of argument, let's suppose the optical drive is too slow for use
as a disk in a typical workstation environment.

In order of price:

Machine	Disk	Tape	Memory	Display	Clock	CPU	FPU	Price

3/50	0		4M	19"	15MHz	68020		$4546
NeXT	0	od	8M	17"	25MHz	68030	68882	$6500
3/50	71M		4M	19"	15MHz	68020		$6646
3/50	0		8M	19"	15MHz	68020		$6926
3/60	0		4M	19"	20MHz	68020	68881	$7300
NeXT	330M	od	8M	17"	25MHz	68030	68882	$8500
3/50	330M	1/4"	4M	19"	15MHz	68020		$11126
3/50	330M	1/4"	8M	19"	15MHz	68020		$13506
3/60	330M	1/4"	4M	19"	20MHz	68020	68881	$13900
3/60	330M	1/4"	8M	19"	20MHz	68020	68881	$16280

So, an $8500 NeXT machine is the equivalent of a $16000 Sun, even if you
don't care about:

25% increase in clock speed.
Next step up in processors.
A DSP.
A good user interface.
Lisp. (that's another $4000 from Sun)
A word processor.
Online dictionary.
Online thesaurus.
Mathematica (can you say $600 for that Sun?)
The od has 256M capacity, versus 60M for 1/4" tape.
An easy way to build good user interfaces.
Channel processors.
Sound.
A word processor.
A UNIX designed to understand multiprocessors and distributed computing.

Now, I'm not saying the NeXT machine doesn't have some gotchas, at the
moment.  But they are mostly bugs due to the current beta release of
the software.  And Sun's software STILL has bugs and gotchas, as anyone
who does networking on a large scale will be happy to tell you.

To say that the NeXT box is not going to compete with Suns for the
workstation market is a little strange.  I'm not sure what you mean by
"orientation"; the NeXT machine does everything Suns do.  The fact that
it does even more doesn't make it LESS suitable for engineering work,
does it?

I don't think it's going to kill Suns.  But I think Sun is going to have
to significantly reduce its prices once the NeXT box is in quantity production.
And that will be good even for those of you who are offended by good
user interfaces and bundled software :-) :-) :-).

Steve
-- 
Steve Dorner, U of Illinois Computing Services Office
Internet: dorner@garcon.cso.uiuc.edu  UUCP: {convex,uunet}!uiucuxc!dorner
IfUMust:  (217) 244-1765