Lower hardware costs are not much of an enticement for Nordstrom, especially since the prices big EDA vendors are charging for Windows NT software match those for Unix. So that's no reason to move. I don't know that I believe PCs offer a lower cost of ownership. There are a lot of things in Unix that seem to work just right. Murray is interested in low-cost hardware, but what he'd really like to see is Solaris running on a Merced platform.
Cost of ownership is an important factor, too.
By the time you factor in the system administration work that's necessary, I think the number of Unix machines per support person is higher than the number of PCs per support person. That makes the Unix platform to be lower cost overall. Networking support, particularly the ability to launch and control jobs across a large network, has been cited as a weak spot for NT by many designers. Texas Instruments Inc. Steve Schulz, senior member of technical staff for TI's advanced ASIC architecture team, said that support and stability emerged as two large concerns during these evaluations. When there was a problem on the Unix side, it was very easy for our Unix gurus to diagnose the problem.