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- Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.misc
- Path: sparky!uunet!spool.mu.edu!agate!ames!pioneer.arc.nasa.gov!okuyama
- From: okuyama@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (Darin Okuyama YR)
- Subject: Re: Is Sun losing touch with its customers?
- Message-ID: <1992Dec22.203852.8733@news.arc.nasa.gov>
- Keywords: interesting old thought
- Sender: usenet@news.arc.nasa.gov
- Organization: NASA Ames Res. Ctr. Mtn Vw CA 94035
- References: <1992Dec22.080719.16062@eskimo.com> <1992Dec22.174827.9514@epas.toronto.edu>
- Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 20:38:52 GMT
- Lines: 35
-
- tagoldth@spine.med.utoronto.ca (Thomas A. Goldthorpe) writes:
- >I have no choice but to buy SparcIntosh (tm) machines these days,
- >simply because this is what sun puts out. I will eventually have to
- >buy into the sunos5.0 stuff, since this is what they will keep fixing
- >(for the time being, at least). I have no choice since the
- >businessmen around me say that "if businessmen at sun said so, then do
- >it".
-
- OK, maybe we all agree that we don't like it when we are not
- given choices by Sun and are forced into spending a lot of
- time and money to get the new stuff. But, ask yourself:
-
- -- did you really think any computer you purchase
- will be viable for more than a few years?
- -- choices cost money! [for Sun to support multiple
- hardware platforms and possibly multiple operating
- systems costs A LOT -- any company is simply going
- to amortize the cost over all the systems (which
- means we all pay more)]
- -- any vendor you choose will approach the problem
- in the same way:
-
- * HP has 4 architectures: PA-RISC, 3000, 68xxx, x86
- * DEC has 4 architectures: Alpha, VAX, MIPS, x86
- * IBM has ? architectures: RS/6000, ...
-
- I will bet anything that the number of architectures
- will be smaller next year, and the year after that.
-
- Anything Sun does will hurt some people and help others. We
- have to take the hurt with the help, and move on.
-
- Darin Okuyama
- NASA Ames Research Center
-
-