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From: allen@grebyn.com (Allen Farrington)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: IBM vs AMIGA cost
Summary: And Now for Something Completely Different
Message-ID: <19446@grebyn.com>
Date: 7 Mar 90 23:18:01 GMT
References: <5527@ur-cc.UUCP> <4251@vaxwaller.UUCP>
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing, Vienna, VA
Lines: 40

> In article <4251@vaxwaller.UUCP> richc@vaxwaller.UUCP (Rich Commins) writes:
> 
>A new IBM system cost breakdown: [...]
>$3900.00 + Tax

Regardless of the performance of this type of system versus an Amiga,
you get what you pay for.  Example:

I spent my entire day today with one of those really cheap, really
high performance systems.  I'll neglect to mention the manufacturer
but the overall construction of the system was atrocious.  The system
was a 20MHz '386/387 with a 330MB ESDI drive and VGA card.  For this
we paid over $4600, a great deal of that was the drive.  Anyhow, the
cards barely seated into the connectors due to a poorly welded case
and bracket frame.  The cover was ill-fitted.  Well you get my drift.
I'm convinced that the low cost will be offset by the poor quality of
this machine and that my department will pay for this in the long run.

But what is my point?  I've opened my Amiga 2500 several times and find
the quality of workmanship to very good.  Yes, I've heard of poorly 
seated chips, etc, but still feel like the quality is good.  My
point is that comparing similarly performing machines of radically 
differing cost will always reveal some significant difference, in this
case the construction quality, so do so very carefully.

Lastly, after configuring every card and double checking to make sure
that I/O space and interrupts don't conflict, I'm glad that the
AutoConfig(R) specification of the Amiga makes the developer handle
that stuff.

Of course you guys knew all this already.

*AutoConfig is a registered trademark of Commodore Electronics, Ltd.


-- 
|------------------------------------------|
| Allen H. Farrington (703) 222-9612       | "It's like nothing we've ever
| allen@grebyn.com                         |  dealt with before."
|------------------------------------------|                    -Mr. Spock