🚀 go-pugleaf

steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield) writes:

>I just got a new price list from our campus Apple
>store. I noticed (with no special effort to emphasize
>it on the list) that faculty, staff, and departments
>(but not students) can buy a Mac II CPU for $1565,
>which is the same price as an SE with two 1.4 floppies.

This is a good price and I advised many students (at my school) and
faculty and staff to pick one up "while they lasted". Of course, once
you pay for a video card, monitor, 4MB RAM, and 80MB HD you are up
to $3300. still without color. Add $660 for that. So the savings 
diminishes once the entire sale adds up. Still a good deal.


> Apple's strategy of obsoleting it seems to be a betrayal of [...]

Oh no! Not one of THESE again... <groan>

There's no mystery about the ceasing of manufacture of the Mac II.
I can no longer go to a Ford dealer and buy an factory fresh 1987
Mustang. So what?

Anyone who thinks the Mac II is obsolete doesn't know what they're
talking about. If it's System 7.0 that has you worried Steve, perhaps
you will be delighted to hear of the PMMU upgrade you can perform for
between $200 and $450 depending on how good a shopper you are. That
qualifies as one of the cheapest upgrades in computer history.

For some reason, Apple, more than any other company, always gets
accused of the most outrageous crimes everytime a new model is
introduced.  If their logo were flat black instead of rainbow colored,
people would probably expect to get their heart cut out and stomped
on. 

It's cheaper to build an Mac IIx than it is to build a Mac II. And
more people want them. It is good business sense to quit production.
Actually, production of Mac IIs stopped several months ago. They are
meerly selling out the rest of the stock.

Don't feel glum, Steve. There are literally dozens of ways to upgrade
your system. And if it's of any comfort to you, we have labs with Mac
IIs and IIxs sitting side by side and virtually none of the students
show a preference over one model or the other.

  --scott

--
Scott Truesdell