🚀 go-pugleaf

Many thanks to all those who responded to enlighten me.  It seems that the
conflicting stories of ALPHA availability from reps in the same sales office
is due to misinformation.  Again, I'm saddened by the fact that some sales
folks are still so misinformed.  I'm more than a little irritated by having
to depend on such unreliable sources.  Of course, having such high levels
of anticipation makes me an easy target for all those teaser announcements.

The bottom line seems to be that I cannot order an ALPHA workstation outright
today, but I can get a future upgrade package.  However, the current not-
to-exceed prices make me not want to upgrade, but rather keep what I buy now,
and maybe just buy a system outright when(if?) they become available.  I saw
no advantage to the upgrade at all.  (Could this have been DEC's plan all
along?)  From purely a performance standpoint, it looks like the HP systems
are the easiest for me to justify right now.

The system that our EASL group is getting is a seed unit, probably a beta
testing model.  However, the lawyers on both sides are still disagreeing on
the terms of engagement.  But the intentions are far from secret, nor has
the rep said that it should be.

I still have to use up my funding by the end of September, and I have to
specify competitive bids.  I would perfer to get a DECstation of some sort
into our section (which seems to have a DECphobia right now, which I'd like
to change), but I could end up with an HP or an SGI.  I just hope I don't 
end up with a SPARCstation.

Again, thanks for clearing me up.
eyc
-- 
>:<  Me:  Eugene Chu (Mr. Butterfly)        | Radar Science & Engineering  >:<
>:<  chu@hanauma.jpl.nasa.gov               | Jet Propulsion Laboratory    >:<
"T'is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness"
But t'is so much easier to curse the darkness.