🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1ik7eeINN9tt@umbc5.umbc.edu>, themos@umbc3.umbc.edu (Mr. Themos Pentakalos) writes:
> In chosing between OSF/1 and VMS, what are the benefits/problems, besides
> the obvious differences of the operating systems?

Take a look at the CD-ROM consolidated software distribution.
Consider that in *.EDU your software license costs are NIL for
most of these products.

Then consider that under Unix you will end up paying real dollars
and/or real local implementation and administration time for many
basic conveniences.

On item that came to mind for me the other day, as I was touring my
old haunts at the MIT labs for AI and computer science:

 * a file and tape archiving system.

In the old days (circa 1980) a place like MIT was a DEC-HARDWARE and
some homebrew or TOPS-20 type house. People actually got used to
the fact that backups and archives were reliable, and that files could be
located and retrieved months or years later with little effort.

But then around 1983 we had the "great leap forward" to Unix. The rest
is a very long story.

Stick with VMS, let the other more famous places eat up their graduate
students and others in low-level, boring, repetitive computer-related tasks.

Anyway the DOMINANT operating system in terms of installed base
on ALPHA could very well be NT. Ask you friendly rep about that.

-gjc