From: rick@sjsumcs.sjsu.edu (Richard Warner)
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: CD ROMS (was: Some more misconceptions regarding OS/2)
Date: 21 Aug 92 15:57:57 GMT
Organization: San Jose State University - Math/CS Dept.

eje@irenaeus.mlo.dec.com (Eric James Ewanco) writes:

>--
>All these complaints about CD ROM players.  Useless because they can't be
>written to.  Too expensive.  Not everyone has them.

>The same could be said about audio CDs several years ago.  Yet nowadays CD is
>the preferred medium (ha!) for audio distribution, and nearly anyone who is
>serious about music has a CD player.  No one is complaining now about how
>"expensive" the CD players are and how "useless" CDs are because they can't be
>written to.  (Who would want to write to a master disk anyway?)

And the price of audio CD players has dropped quite dramatically, and the
standard is quite stable.  The audio CD player I bought 4 years ago at $300+
is equivalent to devices in the $150 range today.

CD-ROM drive prices have dropped, but only on 'old-technology' drives while
the prices of new technology remain high.  The CD-ROM standard is still
very fluid, and no one wants to sink $500 into a drive that will be 
obsolete in 1-2 years.  (note also, CD-ROM drives are much more expensive
than audio CD players; $500 vs $200 for a basic, current technology unit).

The standards/features of CD-ROM drives are changing.  Two new features
may be very important in the near future - XA compatibility and the
ability to read CD's written in multiple passes.  Most CD-ROM drives
on the market today do not have these capabilities, and the ones that
do are rather expensive.

>Someone said that "as soon as $3+<cost of mastering>/disk reaches the price of
>floppies, then CD ROM would be the best choice."  Well, first I could contend
>that that's not the only issue, cost of shipping and ease of installation are
>other issues. 

>Not all CD media, as I understand it, must be "mastered".  WORM disks work just
>fine in CD ROM drives.  You have one WORM drive to do duplication.  You buy
>blank WORM disks, fill them up, and ship them.  No mastering costs.  Now I
>don't know how much WORM disks cost.  But I can guarantee that the tradeoff in
>cost is well below the cost of 458/550 1.44/1.2 disks it stores the equivalent
>of (at at least a quarter each; that's $125).  Heck, for something like OS/2,
>CD ROMs are probably more cost effective in the long run.

>And it is wholly unfair to convict Microsoft of some gross conspiracy or idiocy
>because as has been pointed out, Unix vendors have been distributing in this
>way for years.  (Before that, they distributed on tape.  I have yet to see a
>Unix program distributed on floppy; in fact, very few Unix machines I've seen
>even HAVE floppies.)

Actually, only one UNIX vendor (Sun) has been pushing this envelope.  Most
UNIX systems are still tape bound.  And Sun told everyone about 3 years
ago that they were moving to CD-ROM distribution, and phased it in
slowly while selling relatively cheap CD-ROM drives to their customers.
Not a 'surprise, surprise' ploy like MS pulled here.

And you are quite wrong about UNIX and floppies.  Many of the UNIX 
workstation vendors include diskette drives, including both Sun and
IBM include diskette drives on their standard desktop boxes.  And a
lot of software comes on diskettes (Mathematica, Wingz, XMath, and many
others are either on diskettes as the sole medium or preferred medium).

>If nothing else, CD ROMs are useful for documentation.  (Try juggling 20
>diskettes of documentation searching for a phrase.) DIGITAL has put every
>letter of its huge VMS documentation set (oh, what, thirty inch and half
>volumnes) on CD ROM, you can put it on the network, and use a special program
>for reading it.  Documentation on CD ROM is always cheaper than the paper
>counterpart; DIGITAL is actually giving financial incentives to use CD ROM
>documentation. 

>I've used CD ROMs for installing Ultrix.  Man, is it great to be able to just
>slide in a CD ROM, search the twenty or thirty applications on there, and
>install in a jiffy.

>I for one am glad that CD ROM is making it into the mainstream.

CD ROM will be great when the medium and format is standardized, and when
it is relatively cheap to buy the drives and easy to install them.
For now, it is a cost savings for the vendor (MS) but a big capital
outlay for the customer.

>Eric

>/=============================================================================\
>| Eric Ewanco - Software Engineer     For the rash and outrageous opinions ex-|
>| Digital Equipment Corp, Maynard MA  pressed herein I alone am responsible;  |
>| ewanco@kalvin.enet.dec.com          they do not belong to DIGITAL(TM).      |
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