Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!
hplabs!well!ewhac
From: ew...@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: R.I.P. BYTE: Open Letter to The Editor
Summary: The Sad Demise of BYTE
Keywords: BYTE, subscription, letter, fed up
Message-ID: <6646@well.UUCP>
Date: 28 Jul 88 04:57:24 GMT
Reply-To: ew...@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab)
Organization: Nothing to do with Pixar.
Lines: 151
Quote: "'Cheer up, sad world,' he said, and winked.
'It's kind of fun to be extinct.'" -- Ogden Nash
[ I hope the line eater gets diarrhea from this. ]
Once again, I open myself up to the unknown: Either I'm going to
get praised to high heaven, or flamed to a smoking pile of ashes for this.
The probability of BYTE actually publishing this in their letters section
seems to me to be rather low. In any case, I think it's something that
needs to be said out in the open. Feel free to disagree with me on this;
I'd love to be dead wrong about it, but I don't think I am.
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
Leo L. Schwab -- The Guy in The Cape INET: well!ew...@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
\_ -_ Recumbent Bikes: UUCP: pacbell > !{well,unicom}!ewhac
O----^o The Only Way To Fly. hplabs / (pronounced "AE-wack")
"Work FOR? I don't work FOR anybody! I'm just having fun." -- The Doctor
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Letter to editor of BYTE follows: _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
61 Martens Blvd.
San Rafael, CA 94901-5028
8807.26
Frederic S. Langa, Editor
BYTE Magazine
One Phoenix Mill Lane
Peterborough, NH 03458
Cc: Scott Harris, Subscription Manager, BYTE Magazine
Letters Editor, BYTE Magazine
comp.misc, USENET
Sir,
I received in the mail today a notice informing me that my BYTE
subscription is about to expire, and that I should renew. After having
received your magazine for what will shortly be three years, I was prompted
to write this letter after having received your notice.
Having been involved in computers in one form or another for nearly
twelve years (I am now 24), I have found the industry exciting, and its
possibilities without end. As imaginative people continue to enter the
field, new and wonderful things continue to happen all over the world.
Unfortunately, I am of the opinion that, of late, your magazine has
not kept up with these changes. What was once a wonderfully diverse and
interesting publication has, in my view, degenerated into a Mac and IBM
proselytizer. You have, in editorials, vigorously denied that you have
lost your diversity. However, one needs only to look at the editorial
balance of your articles over the past three years to know that you have
heavily curtailed non-Mac and non-IBM material.
As an Amiga owner, and staunch supporter of same, my perception of
your publication may come as no surprise to you. It is true that many
Amiga owners tend to believe that the Amiga is the Center Of The Universe
as far as computers go. But even stepping back from this position, BYTE
has still lost a great deal of the diversity which made it a once great
publication that every computer owner should subscribe to.
To your credit, you do make attempts from time to time to present
your readers with new programming tricks, and occasionally preview new
hardware. But it seems that these articles are written around the PC, or
in comparison to the PC.
Your publication also appears undecided about whether to accept
that Motorola's 68000 series CPU is a powerful force in the industry.
After promising for many months to produce a 68000-only issue, you turned
around and merely made it your in-depth focus for the September 1986 issue.
However, in the August 1988 issue, you have devoted a substantial portion
of the magazine to the Macintosh. While this is a step forward, Macintosh
is in no way a complete representation of available 68000 systems. There's
also Amiga, Atari, Sinclair, Dual, Sun, and Apollo, to name just a few.
While the 80x86 series can be adequetely represented by a single machine
(the PC), the 680x0 series can not.
Further, in my memory, I can not recall you ever covering to any
great degree the Commodore 64/128, the AT&T 3B series, the MicroVAX,
PostScript programming, or the National Semiconductor 32032 CPU. Your
Apple ][ coverage has dropped to almost nothing, and you only bothered to
mention Sun Microsystems when they came out with a PC-compatible
workstation.
Losing your diversity is, in my opinion, an unwise decision and a
disservice to your readers. While it may be true that the majority of your
readers are PC and Mac users, this is not a reason to fail to cover other
systems in a balanced way. Consider a hypothetical reader, Mr. X, who is
an MIS administrator for some company. Suppose that this person is looking
for a computer solution that will provide him with the ability to do
"desktop video", perhaps as a means to do quarterly reports for his
company. By reading your magazines, he would be inclined to believe that
the only way to do that was to purchase a Mac ][ with an NTSC video card
and a piece of $2000 software that won't be available for several months.
He would be unaware that such solutions exist NOW on the Amiga, for
substantially less money.
More generally, a person who may be heavily PC-oriented may need to
solve a problem which has already been solved on a non-PC system. By
reading about the solution, he may be able to apply it himself on his
system, or purchase the system in question to solve it if his problem is
important enough. Also, people like to know what's happening outside the
realm they've chosen for themselves. Perhaps they will learn about
something happening elsewhere that interests them enough to investigate
further on their own. By failing to maintain your diversity and report on
it, you are depriving your readers of valuable information, which is the
greatest disservice any publication can do.
If a person has solved a particular problem, it should not matter
which system that problem was solved on. A solution is a solution, and
someone somewhere is going to want to hear about it. Ray tracing, once
exclusively the domain of supermini- and mainframe-computers, can now be
done on systems costing less than $1000 complete. Did you report on ray
tracing when it was first developed? Have you reviewed any of the current
crop of available ray tracing packages?
Diversity. It's what this industry is all about. Lots of people
in lots of places doing lots of things, some of them rather interesting.
When people do interesting things, they like to brag about it. There
should be a forum where these people can come and say, "This is what we
did. This is why we did it. This is how we did it. We think it's
interesting. We hope you do, too." Your magazine used to be such a forum.
Sadly, it appears this is no longer the case.
In a recent readership survey, you asked which computer the person
owned. You enumerated every Mac and PC model ever made, made a casual
reference to UNIX, and covered the remainder of the market with the entry
"Other". For a magazine that claims to be diverse, this is extremely
suspicious.
But perhaps the most telling example of the narrowing of your
editorial scope is revealed on BYTE's cover. Beginning with the July 1988
issue, underneath your new hard-edged logo, your magazine no longer proudly
proclaims, "The Small Systems Journal."
I invite you to go through your archives and pull out the March
1981 issue of BYTE: "Structured Programming and Structured Flowcharts",
"Three Dimensional Computer Graphics, Part One", "A Beginner's Guide to
Spectral Analysis, Part Two", "A Simple Approach to Data Smoothing",
"Computer Music: A Design Tutorial", "Desktop Wonders: Hunt the Wumpus
with Your HP-41C". This is what BYTE once was. This is what BYTE should
be. This is the BYTE I want. I am deeply saddened that this kind of BYTE
is no longer published.
It is for these reasons that I am electing not to renew my
subscription to BYTE. I will continue to occasionally check up on you on
the newsstands to see if you have improved, and I earnestly hope that this
will not be in vain. I hope you are able to see and understand what has
happened to your magazine, and will have the desire to correct it. You can
become great again, if you want to.
I bid you farewell.
Sincerely,
Leo L. Schwab
Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!unh!pss
From: p...@unh.UUCP (Paul S. Sawyer)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: R.I.P. BYTE: Open Letter to The Editor
Summary: Mac is getting "popular" so...
Keywords: BYTE, subscription, letter, fed up
Message-ID: <606@unh.UUCP>
Date: 4 Aug 88 18:58:10 GMT
References: <6646@well.UUCP> <5479@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <717@mcrware.UUCP>
Organization: UNH Telecommunications
Lines: 20
Macs and Mac info are beginning to show up in a lot of places where only
Intel Based Monsters used to appear... Even Byte recently ran an editorial
explaining how it had ALWAYS presented Mac info, and to some extent, that's
why my subscription has hung in there, BUT... try to find an ad for Mac
items... Even some of the Mac biggies (e.g., Borland, Microsoft) who buy
Byte advertising seem not to acknowledge that they have Mac products when
they write their Byte ads! So Mac STILL comes across as a poor relative -
and other systems as outcasts.
I still read Pournelle and Ciarcia, but I rarely have to steal away to a
quiet spot to study a Byte article in depth as I once did.
Remember when "pc" meant "personal computer" and not "IBM-PC or knockoff" ??
--
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Paul S. Sawyer uunet!unh!unhtel!paul p...@unhtel.UUCP
UNH Telecommunications
Durham, NH 03824-3523 VOX: 603-862-3262 FAX: 603-862-2030
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!looking!brad
From: b...@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: R.I.P. BYTE: Open Letter to The Editor
Message-ID: <1903@looking.UUCP>
Date: 4 Aug 88 22:21:05 GMT
References: <6646@well.UUCP> <342@eurtrx.UUCP> <3784@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu>
Reply-To: b...@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 10
If you people really want to make this point, you ought to be discussing
it in BIX, where the people who matter will be reading it, rather than
here.
The original "open letter" had valid points, but they will be lost
because the author admitted he was a disgruntled Amiga owner looking
for more Amiga coverage. The letter would have had a lot more impact
if it did not mention the Amiga.
--
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!hplabs!well!ewhac
From: ew...@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: R.I.P. BYTE: Open Letter to The Editor
Summary: My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you,
and I thank you.
Message-ID: <6756@well.UUCP>
Date: 7 Aug 88 08:13:43 GMT
References: <6646@well.UUCP> <5479@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <717@mcrware.UUCP>
<606@unh.UUCP>
Reply-To: ew...@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab)
Organization: The FOX Network. For people who just can't get enough bad TV.
Lines: 39
Quote: "Logic is wreath of pretty flowers, which smell *bad*." -- Spock
[ Food. ]
It would seem that my letter has stirred some degree of support,
which has been, to say the least, very heartwarming. There are a few
additional comments I'd like to make.
Someone made the comment that perhaps BYTE is being superceded by
things like USENET. This tends to make a lot of sense. Perhaps we've grown
too sophisiticated for magazines like BYTE, and should be subscribing to
CACM or something (assuming I know what CACM is). "Realtime" information
systems such as USENET, Compu$erve, The $ource, et al are going to become
the wave of the future. McGraw Hill has attempted to enter this arena with
BIX (BUX?), but is trying to impose old-world rules on it. For all its
faults, BIX seems to earn them a lot of money. And face it: Fooling around
on-line is fun, so you can hardly fault the "editors" for hanging around on
it so much. After all, they all have free accounts :-).
Brad Templeton made the observation that, because I mentioned the
Amiga, the letter's credibility went down the toilet. I thought I had
attempted to keep the Amiga proselytizing to a minimum and keep it in the
scope of the basic premises I was trying to impart, which is that BYTE has
lost its diversity, and is doing its subscribers a disservice by doing so.
I would consider BYTE's editors to be extremely shortsighted if they are
unable to see beyond the Amiga remarks.
>Remember when "pc" meant "personal computer" and not "IBM-PC or knockoff" ??
>Paul S. Sawyer uunet!unh!unhtel!paul p...@unhtel.UUCP
Until the Pee-Cee came out, I always thought it stood for "printed
circuit".
So what should I subscribe to now? CACM? Computer Graphics and
Applications? NewsWeak? :-)
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
Leo L. Schwab -- The Guy in The Cape INET: well!ew...@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
\_ -_ Recumbent Bikes: UUCP: pacbell > !{well,unicom}!ewhac
O----^o The Only Way To Fly. hplabs / (pronounced "AE-wack")
Happy Birthday to me!
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!bellcore!clyde!watmath!looking!brad
From: b...@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: R.I.P. BYTE: Open Letter to The Editor
Message-ID: <1909@looking.UUCP>
Date: 7 Aug 88 18:14:39 GMT
References: <6646@well.UUCP> <5479@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <717@mcrware.UUCP>
<606@unh.UUCP> <6756@well.UUCP>
Reply-To: b...@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 13
It's not that Byte's editors would be unable to see beyond Amiga remarks,
it's that they won't want to. Nobody likes to be told they are screwing
up their job, and if you get a complaint, you look for something that
isn't your fault.
Thus the letter could easily get filed as "Amiga user annoyed at lack of Amiga
coverage," no matter what else it said.
The Amiga decision will be one the editors view as beyond their control --
the machine didn't take off, so they don't have to write about it. Thus they
will be glad to pass the blame in your letter onto it.
--
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!uflorida!novavax!proxftl!bill
From: b...@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: R.I.P. BYTE: Open Letter to The Editor
Summary: Some good words for BYTE
Message-ID: <661@proxftl.UUCP>
Date: 29 Aug 88 08:31:15 GMT
References: <6646@well.UUCP> <5479@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <717@mcrware.UUCP>
<606@unh.UUCP> <6756@well.UUCP> <1909@looking.UUCP> <513@afit-ab.arpa>
<479@Aragorn.dde.uucp> <3047@teemc.UUCP>
Reply-To: b...@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells)
Organization: Proximity Technology, Ft. Lauderdale
Lines: 88
Expires:
Sender:
Followup-To:
Distribution:
Keywords:
In article <3...@teemc.UUCP> wa...@teemc.UUCP (/\/\ichael R. \/\/ayne) writes:
: [A lot of BYTE trashing]
My first comment is that a lot of what he says is just plain
noise: it isn't true of BYTE. Please, guys, if we are going to
bash at someone, lets do it for the right reasons!
: USENET? What's that? Must be some newfangled thing that some new
: company dreamed up.
They're not that stupid.
: The editors at BYTE can not be expected to keep up
: with every new product that comes along, you know. It takes a lot of
: time to chase down all those C compilers for MS-DOS and write those
: clone articles.
Bull. As you ought to know, they *do* make quite an effort to
keep up with the industry. Call them up some time and ask them
about Usenet. If you get the right person, I'd imagine that he
could tell you things *you* don't even know. Keep in mind that
they can't publish even a *tiny* minority of the things that can
be published. As for why Usenet isn't mentioned: ask yourself
what percentage of the personal computer *hackers* are on
Usenet. (My guess is less than a percent.) Never mind the
computer *users*.
: Oh, it's a network you say? Well, they never got the
: free AT-compatible card, software, manual and cables to hook it up on the
: 47 PCs in the office (or maybe it got lost in the mail?). Oh, a conferencing
: type network. Well, they know all about that. After all BYTE was responsible
: for the finest, best, most user-driven, most revenue-generatig (oops, strike
: that) conferencing network around: BIX! EVERYone knows that there is
: nothing better than Bix! Why USENET probably doesn't even RUN on a PC/AT.
: Who could possibly be interested in it? After all, if Jerry didn't write
: about it in his column, it can't be worth much. 1/2 :-)
You can't be serious. Obviously you aren't. You know and I know
that they aren't that dumb, or that ignorant. So why do you
expect us to take this criticism seriously? And if you didn't,
why did you post?
: Well, considering that their market segment is PC-based (And this
: month, we spend 150 pages teaching you how to identify which type of clone
: you are looking at from 50 paces), why should they care if they have abandoned
: the type of people who are responsible for the magazine being in existance?
Look, they are in business to inform their readers, who are no
longer just those who brought the magazine into existence. *Of
course* they are going to shift their focus, since their reader
have changed. It is legitimate to complain that the magazine no
longer fills *your* needs. And to change magazines if they don't
listen. It is not legitimate to comdemn them for it.
: After all, they already got OUR money, they need to pump more hype to get
: the new suckers, er, subscribers to pay them. Gotta be careful, don't
: want to scare off those new users with any big words. Gotta run another
: clone article this month, that'll sell more on the newsstands.
Oh, don't be silly. If they weren't serving their existing
readers, they'd be getting so many cancellations that their
parent company would tell them to change.
: > 3) They have no good arguments against what we say.
: How can you argue against the truth? We don't like what the rag
: has become. When a 350 page magazine takes < 20 minutes to read, the
: information content must be pretty low.
For you. And for me as well, but I'm not going to condemn them
for it. I'll just read a lot of other magazines as well.
---
On the more positive side, you might recall that I posted a gripe
about a review they did of a product of ours. Well recently,
they did a review of another one, Choice Words, a combination
dictionary (you know, the thing with definitions) and thesaurus.
(And yes, part of the product contains some of my work: the
initial database structure for the thesaurus, and project leading
for some of the thesaurus maintenance.) Well, I found *nothing*
to complain about. Not even a minor quibble. And they
complained about one aspect of the product. Correctly.
Good for them.
---
Bill
novavax!proxftl!bill
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!
mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!percival!bucket!leonard
From: leon...@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Powerful machines at home (was Re: R.I.P. BYTE:)
Keywords: BYTE, subscription, letter, fed up, POWER USERS
Message-ID: <1031@bucket.UUCP>
Date: 30 Aug 88 06:33:35 GMT
References: <6646@well.UUCP> <5479@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <4617@fluke.COM>
<8214@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <2815@teemc.UUCP> <11704@oberon.USC.EDU> <3144@teemc.UUCP>
Reply-To: leon...@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Organization: Rick's Home Grown Unix; Portland, OR
Lines: 56
In article <3...@teemc.UUCP> wa...@teemc.UUCP (/\/\ichael R. \/\/ayne) writes:
<->They don't know that some of us feel that a "small system" is a 16Mhz
<->68020 with 4 Meg of RAM, 700 Meg of hard disk, and 16 serial ports running
<->Unix (like my home machine).
<>
<>you say all your friends run UN*X at home, and then you describe this machine
<>that would be the envy of any hobbyist and cost a good $7k (price I just
<>dreamed up) that YOU have at home.
<
< Well, I described the system to my coworkers (at the time I was
<on contract to Ford Motor) and 3 of them also purchased the same machine.
<These were the only people in the building that I thought were serious about
<Unix, they all worked for Ford and none of them were management types
<(just so you know that they had to scrape a bit to come up with the money)
<All of them had some sort of system at home already, CP/M, Unix, Amiga,
<CoCo, Os-9, etc. Me, I had a bunch (3) Cromemco systems and Cromix was
<not cutting it anymore. All of us felt that $5K was a great price for what
<we were getting. The machine is FAST. One of the other purchasers was the
<instigator on getting the 380 Meg drives, all four of us bought one. Several
<of them are making noises about buying a second soon. The computer users
<you know are not as serious about their equipment as the ones I know.
<
< I consider my system to be slightly advanced for the home but not
<by that much. It takes a considerable amount of hardware to be able to
<do useful work. Other people have 20-25 MHz 386 machines running Unix,
<by the time they get done the cost is probably around $5K also. My original
<point is valid, these ARE being used as home systems but the publishers
<are ignoring us.
The publishers are ignoring you because the number of people that can
afford $10k over a couple of years is too limited to support a magazine!
I make less than $25k/yr. But that still means that my income is *above*
the median! Few people can afford to invest more than they pay in taxes
on a computer!
I wish I could afford a 386 or 680x0. I'm making do with an Xt clone...
Yes, you can get good deals, but not everyone can write off their
previous equipment. Out of $4-6k worth of equipment accumulated over
the last 7 years, the only stuff that is still usable with my current
gear are the printers, and they asre crippled by not being "standard".
Yeah, the stuff still works, but the resale value is zip. It's worth
more to me as smart terminals and print servers than I could sell them
for. Such are the perils of committing to the wrong system at the start.
<sigh>
Given the fact that expensive computers are less popular as toys than
expensive cars, I doubt that anything over $5k will *ever* be considered
a "home" system. That doesn't mean that no one will use them at home, just
that it will be unusual.
--
Leonard Erickson ...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
CIS: [70465,203]
"I used to be a hacker. Now I'm a 'microcomputer specialist'.
You know... I'd rather be a hacker."
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!ucbvax!hplabs!pyramid!cbmvax!daveh
From: da...@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: R.I.P. BYTE: Open Letter to The Editor
Message-ID: <4606@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: 30 Aug 88 21:10:21 GMT
References: <661@proxftl.UUCP>
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 36
in article <6...@proxftl.UUCP>, b...@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) says:
> Look, they are in business to inform their readers, who are no
> longer just those who brought the magazine into existence. *Of
> course* they are going to shift their focus, since their reader
> have changed. It is legitimate to complain that the magazine no
> longer fills *your* needs. And to change magazines if they don't
> listen. It is not legitimate to comdemn them for it.
Sound to me they're changing their focus for one reason only -- buckeroonies
from their advertisers. If they're attracting readers from outside their
traditional readership, those folks must be there for some reason. My guess
is that they went there for something different, maybe they're outgrowing
the single-line computer magazines, or just want something with a broader
view. I certainly read BYTE for that latter reason. BYTE can't possibly
cover Macs better than a Mac-specific, or PCs better than a PC-specific,
so why should it even try.
> Oh, don't be silly. If they weren't serving their existing
> readers, they'd be getting so many cancellations that their
> parent company would tell them to change.
I don't think that's necessarily true. They can cut the level of that
service severly before most readers will cancel their subscriptions. They
loose the disenchanted folks during re-subscription time. Even though I
take about 1/2 hour to read the thing from cover to cover, rather than the
several nights it used to take, I probably won't cancel (maybe if I could
"join byte.cancellations" on BIX I would, but otherwise, it's just too
much trouble). I'm certainly not going to resubscribe.
> Bill
> novavax!proxftl!bill
--
Dave Haynie "The 32 Bit Guy" Commodore-Amiga "The Crew That Never Rests"
{ihnp4|uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: D-DAVE H BIX: hazy
"I can't relax, 'cause I'm a Boinger!"
Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!ateng!chip
From: c...@ateng.uucp (Chip Salzenberg)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Powerful machines at home (was Re: R.I.P. BYTE:)
Keywords: BYTE, subscription, letter, fed up, POWER USERS
Message-ID: <1988Sep2.181008.6537@ateng.uucp>
Date: 2 Sep 88 22:10:07 GMT
References: <6646@well.UUCP> <5479@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <4617@fluke.COM>
<8214@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <2815@teemc.UUCP> <11704@oberon.USC.EDU>
<3144@teemc.UUCP> <1031@bucket.UUCP>
Reply-To: c...@ateng.UUCP (Chip Salzenberg)
Organization: A T Engineering, Tampa, FL
Lines: 12
According to leon...@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson):
>Given the fact that expensive computers are less popular as toys than
>expensive cars, I doubt that anything over $5k will *ever* be considered
>a "home" system. That doesn't mean that no one will use them at home, just
>that it will be unusual.
Who said anything about $5k? A decent Xenix/286 or Microport system can
be had for $3k.
--
Chip Salzenberg <c...@ateng.uu.net> or <uunet!ateng!chip>
A T Engineering My employer may or may not agree with me.
The urgent leaves no time for the important.
Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!syntron!jtsv16!uunet!cbmvax!daveh
From: da...@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Powerful machines at home (was Re: R.I.P. BYTE:)
Message-ID: <4664@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: 6 Sep 88 22:32:02 GMT
Article-I.D.: cbmvax.4664
References: <1988Sep2.181008.6537@ateng.uucp>
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 21
in article <1988Sep2.181008.6...@ateng.uucp>, c...@ateng.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) says:
> Keywords: BYTE, subscription, letter, fed up, POWER USERS
> Who said anything about $5k? A decent Xenix/286 or Microport system can
> be had for $3k.
The thread was talking about machines significantly more powerful than
an AT box. It was also a good point on what you can get used if you put
together your own system -- your $3k AT system isn't going come with
support for 16 users, 4-8 megs of RAM, and 700+ megs of hard disk space,
like the mentioned 68020 UNIX system. And even if you add all that extra
stuff, you're still stuck with a 16 bit machine running 16 bit UNIX. What's
a base priced '386 UNIX machine going to run?
> Chip Salzenberg <c...@ateng.uu.net> or <uunet!ateng!chip>
> A T Engineering My employer may or may not agree with me.
--
Dave Haynie "The 32 Bit Guy" Commodore-Amiga "The Crew That Never Rests"
{ihnp4|uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: D-DAVE H BIX: hazy
"I can't relax, 'cause I'm a Boinger!"