🚀 go-pugleaf

daveacg@interlog.com (Dave Glue) writes:
>On Tue, 16 Jan 1996 21:39:55 GMT, root@wombat.hanse.de (Bernd "Bernie"
>Meyer) wrote:
>>adt@netcom.com (Anthony D. Tribelli) writes:
>>>Bernd "Bernie" Meyer (root@wombat.hanse.de) wrote:

>>>: ... and NT carries a price tag that is not encouraging for home use.
>>
>>>Street-priced for WinNT3.51 at a Los Angeles computer swapmeet: US$135. 
>>>Coincidentally, the same as the academic price :-).
>>
>>a) That _is_ extremely unattractive to me. For $135, I can get another 4 Megs
>>   of RAM, or a quad speed CD-Rom, or (almost) an 850M harddisk, or the
>>   keyboard of my dreams

>So any software that costs $135 is "extermely unnattractive"? 

No --- but any software that will give me, as a home user, not much
more benefit than the preloaded Windows 3.1 and still costs $135 is
unattractive. 

Well, to be honest --- yes, any software that costs $135 is unattractive
to me. I am not a pirate, but I still prefer not to pay for my software.
And in the days of linux, X, gcc, emacs, TeX, nn, Netscape and all the
others, that's actually possible.

The last app that I _bought_ was a present for my brother. Before that ---
well, if you want to count the Caldera Network Desktop preview, which cost
me about $50, then yes, I _did_ buy one piece of software in the years
1994-1995. Otherwise, I think the last software purchase would have been
"Comanche" in 1992.

>How much is the Win 95 upgrade? $135 is hardly out of line for an OS
>as extensive as NT, and with home users purchasing Win95, the Plus
>Pack, and usually 4 extra megs to go with it, apparently they don't
>feel the price is out of line.

Well, recent estimates show that about 3 million people actually went out
and bought win95.  That's extremely few. Also, the comment about the extra
megs cuts both ways --- an NT machine should have about 20 megs, even for
home use. That's at least 8 more than for win95, and 12 more than for
win3.1

Now tell me, at $35/meg, what does have more appeal to the average "I'll
write a letter to aunt Sally, and then balance my chequebook" home user?
Using the preinstalled win3.1 with the preinstalled Word 6.0 and the
purchased separately Quicken, or shell out $135 for NT, $420 for 12 megs
and $100 for a half-legal upgrade of Word? That's $655, plus the upgrade
hassle and the speed loss.

Bernie "running neither" Meyer




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