SVR4 shipping, sort of, allegedly; Microport is baaaaack
Mark McWiggins
mark at intek01.uucp
Tue Jul 31 03:27:11 AEST 1990
Surprised I haven't seen this here before now, and it seems definitely
of interest to the net ...
Microport (+1 800 FOR UNIX) is back out of Chapter 11 (or whatever chapter
they were in) and shipping a "developer's release" of SVR4 with the
kitchen sink (TCP/IP, NFS, RFS, X, Streams, everything I can think of
but DWB). I asked when and the guy said "now." Don't know what
"devleoper's release" means ("buggy?" "don't even think of calling for
support?" (1/2 :) ). Now for the bad news: it comes on tape only, and
costs $2500.
UHC (+1 713 782 2700) is shipping a similar package, allegedly on August
15 (though yours may take 4-6 weeks because of their overwhelming backlog,
she said). They'll ship on tape or floppies and want $2995, although
they supposedly have a "VAR program" through which I presume you could make
a better deal.
Disclaimer and editorial: I don't have any association with either of
these two companies, and may never. Gosh, these prices seem a little
steep, to say the least. Have Everex or Intel or Dell made an announcement
that I missed?
If I run the numbers:
386/25 VGA $2500
300 MB disk $1500
Tape drive $1000
Unix SVR4 $2500
Total $7500
I could buy a better-performing Sparcstation SLC for about this (by the time
I added disk & tape), and no doubt a Data General or MIPS for somewhere in
the same range.
Maybe the support costs for a 386 Unix vendor trying to handle questions on
all those assembled-in-pieces systems are so stratospheric that the workstation
vendors are getting a serious competitive advantage, with their relatively
few possible configurations?
I must be missing something ...
--
Mark McWiggins Integration Technologies, Inc. (Intek)
+1 206 455 9935 DISCLAIMER: I could be wrong ...
1400 112th Ave SE #202 Bellevue WA 98004
uunet!intek01!mark Ask me about C++!
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