Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cadnetix.COM!cadnetix!eriks
From: eriks@cadnetix.COM (Eriks A. Ziemelis)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: In defense of the VAX
Message-ID: <6725@cadnetix.COM>
Date: 22 Feb 89 16:49:38 GMT
References: <11037@tekecs.TEK.COM> <28200279@mcdurb> <6563@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Sender: news@cadnetix.COM
Reply-To: eriks@cadnetix.COM (Eriks A. Ziemelis)
Organization: Cadnetix Corp.,  Boulder, CO
Lines: 36

In article <6563@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> eacelari@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Edward A Celarier) writes:
>
>IBM's corporate success is implausible to me, given the difficulty of
>using their machines, the inadequate nature of their software, their
>primitive OSs, etc....
>
>And I really am hard put to explain why the success of UNIX.
>

A great deal of the success, past and current, of a particular computer
and OS come from the fact that once you have exposed someone to it at the
right time, you can get converts for life. That is why manufacturers dump
free or cheap equipment onto universities: in the future, many of these
students will be the ones that will have the sayso in what equipment to
buy for their company. Why do you think NeXT is first being introduced to
college campuses? Sure, NeXT will get S/W out of it, but, they are also
looking down the road for the future sales.

After colleges, come the companies. Once a manufacturer starts to get
the big names on their list (Fortune 100) other potential buyers start to
look and think "If X is buying it..."

Same can be said with OS. Imagine being freed from the evil IBM mainframe
environment and set loose upon a UNIX based system: after that, who
wants to go anything that is not UNIX-like?


Eriks A. Ziemelis


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