🚀 go-pugleaf

>Here in Norway it took a company called Datavarehuset 6 months to from they 
>launched their IBM-clone until they outsold IBM. Which they also are doing 
>today. Party on....
>
>Greets
>
>Rune Hyldmo

Wow that is really impressive.  What was the pricing on the 3090-600E with
vector process and 6 parallel processor mainframe clone?  How many models
of the E/S 9000 mainframes did they have?  Did they also sell the 200 page
per minute laser printers for it?  How about clones of the smaller computers
like the AS/400 minicomputers?  What type of Database applications worked on
the AS/400 clones?  Were they still compatible with the old System/36 machines?
How about the smaller machines like the RISC System/6000's?  Did they have
the full pizza-box to refrigerator size RISC Processors?  Could they still
handle 256 users logged in at the same time?  And then to IBM's smallest
market of micro-computers.  Did they offer a 24-hour replacement maintenance
service?

My point is that while micro-computers are great for home use and a just at
the EARLY infancy of office use, many of the problems of large scale
computing with thousands of users spread of thousands of mile just isn't
available and/or practical right now.  Big computers still sell for lot's of
money and that is where big companies like DEC and IBM stay in business.

I agree that micro-computers are a might force on the horizon and that in
the next decade more applications with evolve for large scale distributed
BUSINESS computing.  But banks, airplane companies, space agencies, defense
systems, etc. can't wait for the future.  These industries need the powerful
mainframe hardare **AND** software that already is designed NOW!  PC's will
most likely take this place in the future and it will be a lucrative area
of computing, but the business systems are not largely in-place in the
highly profitable areas of business and scientific computing.

Look at the large picture if you are going to express generalizations.
I'm not flaming, just mentioning a view point that many microcomputer
users don't seem to mention.
--
Mark Lehmann                      Senior Texas A&M University
lehmann@cs.tamu.edu