🚀 go-pugleaf

Here are some reasons I can think of right off the top:

  Keep abreast of current trends, in CPUs, peripherals,
    systems, software, workstation bugs AND TIMELY FIXES,
    methods for getting vendor support, and product announcements.
  Free Publicity (as long as your 'netters are polite,
    well respected and discreet).
  Track the competition.    
  Avoid misinformation spread about the company's
    products by the ignorant or dishonest.
  Employee education (just about everything I know about
    hardware, CPU design and features to look for,
    support chips, memory support, cacheing --- comes
    from USENet).
  Employee satisfaction.
  Get informed (and uninformed) responses to arbitrarily technical
    questions for *free*.
  Help others and let them know about your products in passing.
  Lots of free, public domain or copylefted, software.
  Status reports of free software projects --- see all
    the gnu.* groups.
    
All of the ideas can be concretized just by considering things your
company has/is/will be doing, e.g., buying workstations (buy now? or
wait for the new Sun workstations which have been described on the net
several times in the last few months?), move to a new platform because
it'll be cheaper or more popular (How is IBM micro-channel looking on
USENet?  What about the new TI AI LISP chips?  How does the Amiga
look compared to the Mac II as a turn-key system?  etc..)

Hope this helps. 

= Joe =
-- 
Joe Grace
ARPA: jgrace@bbn.com
UUCP: {harvard,husc6,decvax,etc.}!bbn!jgrace