spiffy terminals

[Scott Wilson]

In article <9357 at smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>In article <408 at ispi.UUCP> jbayer at ispi.UUCP (Jonathan Bayer) writes:
>>	The difference in cost is between $ 1000 and $ 1500.  When you
>>multiply this by the number of terminals in an office, the cost starts
>>to become prohibitive.
>
>This line of argumentation has been refuted already, but let's try
>again:  Why not supply your office workers with packing crates or
>even cardboard boxes instead of real office furniture?  Just think
>of the savings!

The analogy above to furniture is, as with most analogies, bogus at
best.  The analogy was chosen to cross a line most would agree would
be unacceptable.  One could make a similar analogy saying:  Why not
supply your office workers with designer home furniture instead of
real office furniture?  This analogy would obviously be chosen to
reflect the original posters opposition to unnecessary spending to
obtain features unneeded.  The point is that analogies are sometimes
convenient for exposition but are only superficially useful in proving
a point.  For every analogy you can come up with to support your
position someone can come up with one to refute it.  Ban analogies!

As far as the terminal vs. bitmap display argument goes, I think there
is no absolute rule.  For some people/situations one is better and for
others the other is better.  I'd say it all reduces to a simple decision
of whether the increase in expense of the hardware outweighs the
increased productivity.  For example, consider a receptionist that
mainly answers the phone and on occaison sends a phone message by e-mail
to someone.  I think you could easily argue that a terminal is sufficient
for this purpose and that paying more for a fancier display would not
return any increase in productivity.  On the other hand, people like me
who make some pretense of doing useful software development are more
productive given fancier displays and more powerful hardware.

Here at Sun we have billions of terminals.  Some of them are used by
people who only occasionally access a computer.  Most are used as
consoles to machines (like servers) that rarely have a user sitting
in front of it and therefore don't need a bitmap display.  Although
I've seen at lot of terminals here I don't think I've seen any in
positions where I though it would be more cost effective to have a
bitmap display.



--
Scott Wilson		arpa: swilson at sun.com
Sun Microsystems	uucp: ...!sun!swilson
Mt. View, CA