🚀 go-pugleaf

David Basiji writes

> A few months ago, my Dad told me that 3Com had hired a high-level NeXT
> hardware person.  I don't remember his name but he was very pessimistic
> about NeXT's future prospects in the hardware market.

No kidding.

I'm waiting to see what NeXT offers to customers once people can purchase  
clones to run NeXTSTEP '486. If the prices of these '486 boxes aren't  
comparable to NeXT offerings now, they certainly will be in the near future.

I think that NeXT's proposed pricing of NeXTSTEP '486 makes lots of sense.  
Here's why:

Expensive software and cheap hardware means that I can quite painlessly upgrade  
the box I run NeXTSTEP on after a few years, when the P5 becomes commonplace  
for example, or when I can afford to buy a color monitor and local-bus  
motherboard.

I currently own a 25 MHz monochrome NeXTstation, and if I want something  
faster, I've got to lay out $6000 + all over again to get it. (I'm not  
complaining, I'm just carefully considering what my next purchase will be).

Unless NeXT makes some some change to its pricing, radically improves the power  
of its hardware placing it out of the class of PC clones, or changes the way it  
sells its hardware (i.e. a separation of hardware and software license as  
exists in the clone world), then I think NeXT will be hard pressed to sell NeXT  
machines.

Regards,
Mark
-- 
Onyschuk and Associates, Toronto Canada | mark@plexus.guild.org     (NeXTmail)
NeXT Signal Processing Applications     | 73700.3114@compuserve.com (YaWNmail)
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