Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!dogie.macc.wisc.edu!vms.macc.wisc.edu
From: anderson@vms.macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: The future of Minix
Message-ID: <3195@dogie.macc.wisc.edu>
Date: 16 Feb 90 23:21:23 GMT
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Organization: University of Wisconsin Academic Computing Center
Lines: 44

In article <5443@star.cs.vu.nl>, ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) writes...

]A couple of messages back someone noted that he had just bought a chemistry
]book for $70.  I suspect that if that publisher had to throw in 17 diskettes
]as well, they wouldn't come out that much lower than $120.  Furthermore, I bet
]they wouldn't permit their author to distribute free upgrades to the disks
]indefinitely on the net.  Version 2.0 and beyond will have the same license
]as the current one: you may may 2 copies, so three people can share the $120.
]I think compared to what Microsoft, Lotus, and most other companies charge,
]this is not outrageous.

Case in point:  yesterday my upgrade from the standard edition
of Microsoft Word to Word for Windows arrived.  My employer 
(who escaped taxes by virtue of being a government) shelled
out $150 plus $5.50 shipping.  This brings 7 or 8 floppies
and a set of documentation.  To my utter stupefaction, this
$155 investment included a card I could send in -- with (you
guessed it) *another* $20 so I can have the technical 
reference manual (with such useful things as how you write
macros, etc.).

It's reported to be a superior product (I can say it's no
great speed demon, despite my having a 33 MHz 386 machine
with 8 megs, a 17ms hard disk, a 256K ram cache and a 1.5M 
disk cache).

But compared to Minix?  Let's be realistic, a working
operating system--contantly improving and expanding at an
amazing rate--plus a first-rate textbook by an author who
is himself a simple email message away, who proves his star
status by never acting like a star, plus the most liberal
licensing conditions in the entire industry, all this for
less than 25% of the cost ($495) of Word for Windows.

Let's face it, there are people who will complain about the
price if it's free or even if you pay *them*, and students
probably have some legitimate concerns, given the debt some
of them routinely assume as part of getting the degree,
but despite that, Minix is still the deal of the  decade.

==Jess Anderson===Academic Computing Center=====Univ. Wisconsin-Madison=====
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