🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <32caaeeb.927783406@news.monmouth.com>
rlarson@monmouth.com (Eric Larson) writes:

>  The acquisition and maintenance costs
> and lack or reliability of PC's is a huge weakness that cost companies
> billions per year. The company I work for has pays over $7 million per
> year in maintenance and support for PC's. This is about 7% or the
> company's projected profits. This is MUCH more than they spend to
> actually purchase hardware in a given year. Sooner or later somebody
> is going to wake up and realize that they are in fact that they could
> in fact save BIG BUCKS by getting rid of PC's and going to something
> with lower maintenance costs.

HP's solution to maintaining thousands of Wintel boxes (in 2.5 years I
have yet to see ONE Mac at the Cupertino megasite) is to only support
marginal nonstandard software (AMI Pro, etc.) for which it can get site
licenses and distribute over the network. There are standard hardware
configurations as well.  Anybody who has to do real work, like my
publications department, must install and support whatever other
hardware and software needed to keep afloat. 

HP could have purchased several complete top-end Mac workstations and
printers (with Illustrator, Photoshop, and Framemaker) for what they
have paid me for trying to get the Wintel lashups to print across the
network, etc.

Wake up, world. Last I heard, 60% of the cost of software was in
maintenance, and I believe that documentation costs are comparable. I
don't know about hardware, but I do know that support costs keep going
*up*,  while hardware prices keep going *down*. 

BTW, does anybody have a feel for the robustness of the MacOS vs.
DOS/Windows/NT WRT the 1999 -> 2000 issue? Perhaps we can hope that
only the Macs will be left standing on 1-1-2000.

MIke