From: mfraioli@grebyn.com (Marc Fraioli)
Subject: Re: Tidbits 01/06/93
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 22:29:09 GMT

In article <1993Jan7.063028.14772@fcom.cc.utah.edu> brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
>that represents a leap ahead in usability, said Microsoft officials and
>
>------------
>[PCWeek; December 28, 1992/January 4, 1993; Page 135]
>Novell's acquisition of USL sends stock edging downward.
>
>Concern over the $350 million price tag on Novell Inc.'s proposed
>acquisition of Unix Systems Laboratories Inc. pushed Novell's stock down
>$1.50 on Dec. 21 and 50 cents Dec. 22 to close at $26.75.
>
It is now back up to $29.25.  Many trade rags are saying that the move
will benefit both Unix and Novell.  Dennis Ritchie was not pleased,
however.  Contacted by Open Systems Today, he replied with two quotes
from the Bible (which I can't remember off hand), essentially calling
AT&T whores for selling it.

>it, and some like DEC and MIPS bet the farm on it. And when you added

Well, hardly.  It's a VERY minor part of both of their strategies at the
moment (more below).

>------------
>[Computer Technology Review; December 1992; Page 2,15]
>Wireless WANs, SCSI, Windows Star At Comdex
>	by Dave Trowbridge
>...
>WIN WITH WINDOWS
>
>It's no longer necessary for the Interface Group to put aside a section
>of Comdex devoted to Windows computing -- it's now almost impossible to
>find a booth that _doesn't_ feature Windows in some way. There is no doubt
>that Windows is the de facto standard for PC computing, and much evidence
>at this Comdex that Windows NT will be the same for workstation computing.
>
For PCs quite possibly, for workstations, bull roar.  Again, more below.

>The most compelling evidence for the coming triumph of Windows NT was
>not, however, at the Microsoft ISV booth, where vendors were displaying
>NT applications. Instead, the real NT excitement was at the DEC booth,
>where numerous NT applications were running on the Alpha AXP PC, an EISA-bus
>personal computer based on Digital's new Alpha chip. ISVs noted that porting
>to the Alpha was a matter of hours or days only, and the box is all one
>could wish in a personal workstation: incredibly fast, responsive, and
>yet utterly familiar.
>
>Digital is literally betting their company on Windows NT, for if NT doesn't
>fly, then neither does Alpha, and, as a Digital spokesman said: "Alpha
>is not a part of Digital -- Digital is a part of Alpha." The company intends
>to license any and all parts of their Alpha technology to all comers,
>hoping to make it an industry standard. If they succeed, you can kiss
>UNIX good-bye, except as a Macintosh-like niche player -- Windows NT is
>that good.
>
This is all one of the biggest loads of crap I have ever seen.  Just
today I attended Digital's Open Systems Open House in Alexandria, VA,
where the Alpha processor was the star of the show.  Yes, NT was demoed
at the show, and yes, there was significant interest.  However, it was
only shown on one Alpha machine (it was running on several of DEC's 486
machines), and the Alpha demo was running 28 copies of Solitaire, and no
one was allowed to touch the machine (the keyboard and mouse were locked
in a cabinet under the table).  Anyone want to guess why?  The Alpha
machines running VMS and Unix were readily available for anyone to poke
at as they wished.  Could it be that NT is embarassingly unstable?
Further, Digital is in no way "betting the company on NT".  Of the seven
models of Alpha-based machines they were showing, NT runs on only one of
them, the low-end EISA bus machine.  All other Alpha models use DEC's
TurboChannel bus, and NT DOES NOT RUN ON THEM.  I asked the DEC
representatives there about this, and they were very clear on it.  They
said that if initial reaction to NT on Alpha was positive, they would
consider porting it to their actual workstations in addition to their
PCs, but this is by no means certain.  I was also told that there were
no plans at all to put NT on any of their multi-processing servers and
data centers-- NT's vaunted multi-procsessing abilities will not be
exploited on Alpha hardware any time in the near future.  In the Q&A
sessions that I attended on the future of Alpha computing, most of the
questions were about VMS, interestingly enough.  Admittedly they had a
separate session specifically for NT, and it was well-attended, and this
may have drawn off NT-specific questions from the other sessions.

So in sum, Digital will be offering NT initially only on their PCs,
including Intel and Alpha based PCs, but not on their workstations or
servers, which will be Unix or VMS only for at least the next year or
two.   The Alpha PC costs ~$7,000, and according to DEC will provide
about 5 times the performance running NT of a 486/50.  They claim about
2.5 times the performance of Pentium, although this is obviously hard to
be sure about.  It is obviously only for very high-end PC users, and
those are really pretty rare.  The whole NT/Alpha combo didn't look too
impressive to me.

-- 
Marc Fraioli
mfraioli@grebyn.com	        	(So I'm a minimalist...)
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy