From: kzin@terminus.gatech.edu (John Rudd)
Subject: Re: SPARCclassic vs. 486 (Was Re: SPARCClassic (and other Sun announcments))
Organization: Georgia Tech College of Computing
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 06:26:01 GMT

books@fsunuc.physics.fsu.edu (Roger Books) writes:

(specific cost details omitted)

>Total $4,345				$4,465

>The question, is Solaris and a multi-user machine worth more than $120
>to you?  That's an easy one for me.

>Roger
>books@fsunuc.physics.fsu.edu

The problem is, the difference is more than $120.  How much does a good
word processing package cost for a Dos/Windows environment?  how much
does it cost for a SparcStation?  You forgot that if your Sparcstation is
a standalone, you MUST buy a CDROM, since you wont be able to load the
OS off of the network.  The Gateway doesn't require a CDROM, so you really
don't need to include that in the cost of the Gateway.  You have to have
either a tape drive or CDROM to get most of the software distributions
for the sun.  For the Intel, most of them come on floppy.

Oh, and the Floppy for the LX costs $150, not $100.

So, you've got to buy a $650 CDROM, and if you're buying, say, FrameMaker..
that's, waht, another $800?

Whereas, word for windows is $400?  Gateway total is $4745, Sparc is $5965

what does a good laser printer cost?  for the sparc you get a sparcpritner
for $2500.  For the Gateway you get a TI Microlaser for $1200ish.
The Sparc now costs you in the area of $8500.  The Gateway in the area of
$6000.  

The Sparc has two main disadvantages: applications cost on the order of
twice as much money, and there is the hidden cost of the CDROM.. Sun has
FORCED individual users to buy the CDROM in order to get ANY sort of
use of the system (since you have to load the OS from the CDROM, and
a standalone system wont have a network CDROM available)

That's a hidden cost of $650 right there.

Then there's "Do I want to do development?".  If you want to, and you
aren't on the internet.. you're going to pay $300 to $2000 for a C
development system.  On a dos machine, $300 is near your upper limit.


Don't get me wrong.. I'm willng to pay an extra $3k for a Sun workstation.
I think it's worth more than double a Dos Box.  But your analysis is flawed
in that the cost of the hardware isn't the only relevant area.  The cost
to the user will include software..and Unix systems in general, and Sun
systems specifically are still WAY behind in this market area.

Also keep in mind that you can at this point divide your harddisk in to
two partitions, and have a DOS partition and a BSD/386 partition..this will
only cost you $1000, tho you'll have to buy a tape drive.. so maybe your
system is now at $8000.. You've paid $500 less than the sparc, you have
your choice of low cost Dos aps, or advanced unix aps (bsd/386 will soon
support SCO applications, and runs non-graphics dos applications).
(to get your sparc to run those nice dos applications will cost you even
more money..but atleast then you can afford to buy cheaper software)

The questions don't stop at simple hardware analysis.  You also need
to know what you want out of the system.  And in that case, cost may
be irrelevant.  

(I guess the best summary of hte above is: the previous posts about
'a gateway costs X, and a Sparc costs X + a little more so buy a Sparc'
are a little absurd, as they don't take enough of the system picture
in to account to be a reasonable model of the total end user cost; nor
do they take in to account the purpose of the system and the best way
to meet that goal)


John

John Rudd  --  kzin@cc.gatech.edu         ex- kzin@ucscb.ucsc.edu
All opinions expressed here are my own, and no one elses.
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