From: mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539)
Subject: Re: Some more misconceptions regarding OS/2 and NT
Organization: Texas Instruments Inc
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 20:02:36 GMT

In <1992Aug14.100611.5490@microsoft.com> petesk@microsoft.com (Pete Skelly) writes:

>In article <1992Aug13.213845.3007@mksol.dseg.ti.com> mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
>>
>>
>>Yeah, but seriously, how many computers come with disk drives?  Now
>>count how many have CD-ROM as a 'standard' part of the setup.
>>Frankly, I was just a bit hacked off at Sun when they came out with
>>this policy of shipping everything on CD-ROM only, and that's for
>>workstations that are just a bit higher dollar value than the typical
>>Intel machine.  MS doing it is RIDICULOUS.

>How many computers are shipped with the necessary resources to do productive
>developement.  Yeah, I know there's got to be some guy out there who's 
>developing on a 286 with a tiny hard drive, but He's probably loosing money
>in productivity.  

Well, Pete, my 4 machines at home are a 486-50DX EISA with 16 MB of
RAM and a 1 GB disk, a 386-25DX ISA with 6 MB of RAM and a 150 MB
disk, an Apple Mac+, and a laptop.  Now, among ALL those machines I
have ZERO CD-ROM drives.  Is it your contention that they are ALL too
small to have CD-ROM drives?

>How much time do you think it will take you to install
>a development system off of floppies, maybe 4 hours.  

I've installed full-blown UNIX environments in less than 4 hours!

>At a consulting
>rate of $40 an hour (for you, your computer, office, etc, and this is low
>priced, believe me), that comes to $160 for your install.  For a CD rom,
>maybe an hour, at most.  That comes to $40.  The difference = $90.  You
>can now only afford to install only 5 or so times before you're loosing
>money.  That includes installing Anything that takes a full CD rom, not just
>NT, so if you add up future versions of NT, and other software that will start
>to get large, it becomes very economical for developers.

Of course, this assumes a lot of things.  It assumes that the CD-ROM
winds up being 'plug and play'.  It assumes that I want to buy a
CD-ROM that Microsoft decides to support.  It assumes everybody else
will follow Microsoft.  AND IT ASSUMES I WANT A FRIGGING CD-ROM IN THE
FIRST PLACE.

[And NT can't take a full CD-ROM (660 MB), either, unless MS is
*GROSSLY* lying about how large a hard disk someone should have to
install it.  The only stuff it seems to make sense to me to have a
CD-ROM for is stuff that has like 500 MB of clip art.]

>>
>>It's not a matter of 'not needing money'.  It's a matter of needing a
>>CD-ROM. 

>If you really don't like it, get a friend with a CDROM drive to put your
>copy on floppy for you.  Install twice and don't call me in the
>morning.

I really don't like it.  I don't like it enough so that I won't buy
this product.  Not to mention that none of the people I know have felt
any great need to waste money on a CD-ROM, either; all of Microsoft's
hype about 'multimedia' notwithstanding.

As for calling you in the morning, no need to worry about that.  Does
Microsoft have a training class where they teach people to be arrogant
and overbearing, or is it something in the selection process when they
hire you?


-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy