🚀 go-pugleaf

>
>IBM came out with PC/IX, a full blown UNIX development system for the
>PC roughly 3 years ago, and then it cost around $1000.  Today, you can
>get a full blown MicroPort version of System V for the PC at less than
>$1000.  And you don't have to buy an 80 meg hard disk to get it.
   
   You only have to buy an 80 meg drive to run it. :-)
  People who have 80 meg or greater drives so they could put unix on it
can and should complain, anyone who wanted to run unix on 20 meg should
hit themselves 20 times with a wet noodle.

     
>UNIX in the home has been somewhat affordable for quite some time, and
>I think the price for A/UX is out of line -- $4000 more than the PC
>versions for what?  A bunch of development tools that you may not need,
>and the "privilege" of installing a new 80 meg hard drive into your
>machine.

   My experiences with Xenix.  IBM: we don't support that, microsoft does.
                                MS: we don't support that, IBM does.

   My expierience with Apple:   1: Hmmm... We'll check on it.
                                2: Yeah. Someone else had that problem. Here
                                   do this until the new version comes out.

   My father's experience with HP-UX: zillons of floppys to install.
                                      a useless c compiler to make the kernel
                                      zillions of useless printed copys of the
                                      man pages. Eats disk space on drives that
                                      cost several K for a 20 meg.
      
>(I think the software provided is probably worth having, but is it worth
>the additional $$?)

  Yes. True if you're not a unix-hacker having a unix which can actually 
shutdown and go into another operating system without having to spend 20 min
rebuilding the file structure might not be worth extra money. Or a unix which
doesn't take a day to install an _configure_. Or one that comes standard with
all the things you would have had to port anyway.

 The people who think apple's prices are too high are missing the point. Apple
is selling A/UX as a real system. Comparing A/UX to a sun is reasonable because
suns come with a large assortment of useful utilities. Comparing it to a $200
port of unix isn't because to get a useful system you will have to add a fair
amount of outside utilities and do a lot of porting to your version of unix.
Caveat: You aren't paying for 'just' unix, you're paying for all the other
stuff they had to port and debug and support. True, you could buy a $200 version
of unix, a third party drive, an AT clone. Then you could completly rewrite the
$200 version of unix so that it actually worked with your clone, and spend lots
of time porting emacs et. al. to your system. Of course you'd have to buy some 
development tools to do that...Maybe another hard disk to hold all that stuff...

You can't get ahead, you can't even break even.

Besides the general rule I've noticed when pricing mac systems versus others is:
  Hardware: more then the alternative.
  Software: less then the alternative.
  Hardware+Software: About even on both sides.

As chuq says: a sun makes a poor mac, a mac a poor sun.
As I say: Xenix? Don't make me laugh.

P.S. if you feel like replying to my obviously biased views (unix is for dweebs)
   do it with E-Mail (wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu). This is starting to become
a religous war and I doubt everyone else wants to read 20 replies which say
I'm wrong Brand X unix from Y is so wonderful. Bleah. Make E-Mail not war!

Pierce Wetter
Finagle's Creed:
	Science is true.  Don't be misled by facts.

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wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu

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