🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct5.183607.7233@liveware.com> todd@liveware.com writes:
> After following the thread about NeXT delaying CD Drive shipment
> even further I can't help but think they knew there was going
> to be a problem on quantity.  My reasoning (maybe flawed) is
> due to the offer they made to User Groups to purchase a drive
> and CD for a low price of $452 or something.  This was based
> on the requirement that users who paid and where members of a
> particular group participating in this 'deal' would be able
> to upgrade with this user group drive.
> 
> Now I think the deal was a good one, but at the same time
> it also seems to be the attempt was to cover as much as possible
> with a 'limited' resource pool (ie drives).  It makes some
> sense to me to connect that with the current shortage and point
> a hard finger at NeXT about this issue.  They must have known
> also due to their 'just in time' policy about manufacturing.

I doubt it.  I got that offer too (I'm the president of the RPI NeXT user's  
group), and they gave that offer out a long time ago.  At the time they had  
some backlog of drives, but were still quoting 9 week shipping times.  The  
offer was meant to let a users group buy 1 CD-ROM drive, and have the  
members just buy the Release 3.0 upgrade (sans drive).

I suspect the thing that nailed NeXT was the same thing that nailed us, here  
in the ITS product center (the micro store for RPI).  Hardly anyone ordered  
the CD-ROM drive until release 3.0 was actually shipping.  We only sold a  
few of the special CD-ROM bundle between May (or whenever it came out) and  
September 1st.  We had a lot more orders for the bundle in the second half  
of September.  

If you asked us on September 1st, we would have said "Looks like this bundle  
isn't going to sell all that well".  We probably sold more (well, *ordered*  
more...) in the last week then we did in all the time up to September 1st.   
If the same thing happened with everyone, I can believe that NeXT was caught  
off guard.

[not that the above is any excuse for bundles ordered before Sept 1st, but  
it might help for anything ordered in Sept]

--
Garance Alistair Drosehn     =     gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu
ITS Systems Programmer            (handles NeXT-type mail)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;           Troy NY    USA