🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov12.133126.13079@linus.mitre.org>, bs@gauss.mitre.org (Robert D. Silverman) writes:
> In article <1992Nov10.211153.5992@ryn.mro4.dec.com> bhandarkar@wrksys.enet.dec.com (Dileep Bhandarkar) writes:
> :
> :In article <BxIJxr.GD5.1@cs.cmu.edu>, nickh@CS.CMU.EDU (Nick Haines) writes...
> :> 
> :>Two questions:
> :> 
> :>	- how much do these machines cost? What's the SPEC/$?
> :
> :DEC 3000 Model 400 AXP starts at $15K
> :DEC 3000 Model 500 AXP starts at $39K
> :DEC 4000 AXP starts at about $70K
> :DEC 7000 AXP starts at about $150K
> :DEC 10000 AXP starts at about $300K
> :
>  
> These prices are ridiculous. There are nowhere close to being competitive
> with what is being offerred by Sun or HP.
>  
> 108 Specs for $15K??  Why would anyone want one?

It is very simple, you have to look at these figures from the perspective 
of a regular DEC client, that is, somebody who is used to buying VAX systems
what ever the cost-performance might be.

This is DEC's market, their customers might get suspicious if their top
of the line model costs anything less than 250k.-)

I would love to have such a customer base. Have you ever wondered why DEC
did not release any systems any sooner? (rumours had it that they had UNIX
running months ago) They would never release anything which would not run
every VMS program flawlessly. Why? Imagine all these VMS users watching
DEC release another UNIX system (the ULTRIX, MIPS based DECstations already
made a lot of them very nervous), they would think DEC is dropping VMS and
they would start to look around for UNIX.

DEC would not like that. They will herd their flock very carefull.-)

Sietze

-- 
Sietze Schukking                            phone(work): (0)15 783643
Delft University of Technology              phone(home): (0)15 625016
Department of Electrical Engineering        fax:         (0)15 784898
Section Computer Architecture               email: sietze@tardis.et.tudelft.nl
    and Digital Technique
P.O. Box 3051        2600 GA Delft          The Netherlands