Re: Ridin' Through Gateway Country, Roundin' up details.... (fwd)

["Robert G. Brown" <bob@xxxxxxx>]

>>With the volume of data a lot of people are handling today....
>Volume of data?
Yeah, volume of data. Animated graphics, Web Surfing (complete with client-
side Java nad the JVM to run it), ISDN and cable modems (300K/sec downloads 
for $50 per month), Encarta and other multimedia apps. Internet phone and 
video. Games. Even a package like TurboTax is bloated from the 2 diskettes it 
took in 1991 to a full CDROM today, complete with video clips of tax experts 
telling you how to save money on your taxes.

A lot of the bandwidth I'm talking about is embedded, not only coming down
your phone line but also across the bus and out to the speakers and display
screen.  Think about the data movement, and tell me that people aren't moving
A LOT MORE DATA than they did in 1990.  Go Ahead, I dare ya! :)

Much of this data movement is embedded in at least one of the things that 
home users do (or say they want to do).

>Gateway sells PC's for home user. If your talking office desktop's I would
>possibly agree. 
They do, They also have a contract with the largest employer in THIS town for 
desktops. I use one of their workstations as a footrest (and a couple of other
things) whenever I go to my office to consult for them.

>If your talking office desktop's I would possibly agree.
The defense rests (see above). NO ONE with the production capacity of Gateway
or Dell can afford to ignore the corporate and OEM market. They surely do not.

By The Way:

    If you order a Dell Computer, they will pre-install ANY configuration you 
    give 'em.  This means Win95 with apps you specify or supply, Linux, or
    BPPWS (Bobby's Personal Pricing Workstation). I don't don't have a price
    for this service, but if I were a corporate buyer who wanted to get 500
    new workstations with some standard configuration, I'd consider this ser-
    vice with care.

    I have it that Dell will now discount $100 off your system price if you
    order OS-free hardware. Until now they have bundled Win 95 in the pur-
    chase price. No work on whether they will preload any other OS you want
    (what can I be thinking of? Right! OS/2, BSDi, or BeOS :). 

>But for home PC's I have a hard time imagining that Word Processing or your
>personal budget would require more than a 486.
As a user of WP 5.1 and quicken on an AT, I certainly agree.  Try buying that
software today (NOT at one of those geeky computer sales or swap meets, I'm
talking mass-market, for JQ Public), sorry, you're almost a decade late. I
don't use my Linux box for "home computing", and if I wasn't in the biz
I might not even have done this at all.

>But then I haven't really ran M$ since the Wfwg days.  I know that I
>had three X-terminals hooked to my 486DX33 w/ 16Mb RAM and three users could
>use Word Perfect 7.0, MPSQL, Z-Mail, and WingZ spreadsheets at the same time
>without a problem (I'm serious!).  But then Linux is WAY more efficient than
>Winbloze.
Oh, I believe you; the fact is that you really can't set up that kind of 
system on anything M$ based, at least without buying some (obscure) 3rd party
software. The WinTel cartel wants you to buy more {Intel Inside [tm]} work-
stations to do a LAN. Performance doesn't even enter into it.

>>>It's been at least as reliable for me as DOS has ever been, if not more,
>>>and I actually enjoy using it enough that I'll always have at least one box
>>>running it.
>>I'm pleased that SOMEONE has a stable install of Win95; this is one of the
>>cases I've heard of. Have you ever had to solve a problem by reinstalling or
>>doing extensive recovery work?
>Stable has a lot to do with the hardware. I had a Wfwg machine which I used
>with Borland C++ and Wordstart primarily. It ran without a problem for years!
>My roommates PC crashed and burned all the time (like weekly).  The big flaw
>in M$-Winbloze is the video drivers,  cards come and go so fast,  and vendors
>need to win performance comparisons, so they cheat.  Buy an ATI card, and your
>systems will be much more stable.  Diamond makes the worst video drivers on the
>market.  We replaced my roommates card with a ATI from some generic thing and
>all his problems vanished.  It's too bad the trade rags don't include a
>"durability" rating in their reviews.  These problems don't follow to Linux
>because the vendors do not develope the drivers,  developer's who actually have
>to live with the card do.
Excellent write up, and it may explain some of my NT stability problems. I
run on the Diamond Stealth 64000 graphics card, and once I got over the 
headscratching stage of inital configuration (with a beta driver at the time),
I've just haven't had a peep from Linux about that.  OTOH, NT bitches, moans, 
complains (about SOMETHING, you just can't tell, maybe it's video) and flops
over, spewing character oriented hex as it spirals into the ground.

Maybe I should tell it to come up as generic VGA, and see it that's more sta-
ble. It'll be ugly, but I don't care (the other way, I think it's still ugly,
just sharper:)

>>Let's look at price-performance. I paid over $1.5K for the NT software I
>>have, and there's a goodly amount of stuff I need to do that I just cannot
>>accomplish under NT. Add to that over $4K of time (so far), to get it config-
>>ured and keep it running. Professionally, I've spent about $2.5K in time to
>>keep Linux running, but only about $60.00 for the software. The only thing I
>>cannot do in Linux is test and compile for NT!
>Rumor has it that BOCHs will now run NT in a vm.  If I can land myself a cheap
>copy of NT,  and when I get my new drives,  I'm definitely going to give that a
>try.  I hate dual booting.
Which would not have stopped me from buying anything. However, it would allow
me to be more productive; if I could run VC++ 4.5 under NT under Bochs under 
Linux (under the table, under the roof:) flipping around would go quicker,
for the same reason... not need to reboot.

I'm starting the think that the best thing is to build an NT box; a LAN I
fosters the notion of a LAN devoted to ALL the MS production/development work.
That machine can be NFS/SAMBAd togther with this one, I could get an ATI card 
for it, etc.and allow NT to be real happy.  It might be a little more pricey
than I expected, but so what? Look at what I've spent in terms of an NT system
already.

>>For me, Linux represents FAR better price-performance. I can do EVERYTHING I
>>need in order to support a lot of work, and it's A LOT less expensive than
>>NT. If THe cost (to me) of RH Linux went from $50.00 to $1500.00, I wouldn't
>>care; the distribution is still a better value.
>What else is there to say.  It's cheap, it works.
The "what else" is -- Why ain't the rest of the universe using it? 
Um... we know the answer to that... it's one of the reasons KLUG exists.

>>>... we'll donate one to KLUG. I've got enough other things on the burner
>>>that I don't want to commit to any real deadline, but I would like to (and
>>>will try to) get it to you by the end of July.
>Great! Maybe yours will work.
That would be refreshing. We also have parts from the prior attempt.

>>>>>Anyone know anything more about DEC's acquisition by Alpha?
>>>>Eh?
>>>Pardon my buttery fingers. I meant to say, DEC's acquisition by Compaq. Is
>>>this rumor or fact?
>>Fact. Done deal.
>Fact.  Compaq wants to become a Enterprise Systems supplier,  to do that they
>needed UNIX.  DEC had UNIX.  Compaq now has both NT and UNIX,  and a trained
>support team (from DEC) in both fields.  I think it is good for everybody.
Compaq also knows how to sell computers, a department in which DEC was almost 
clueless. DEC is a very strong technical company, but this has always been
carefully hidden from the outside world (only us few industry insiders know 
this, the only worse offender in this has been Xerox).

>>>>>I was surprised to learn the Alpha was still going at all ...
>>>>Eh?
>DEC sued Intel if I recall correctly.  DEC and Intel settled out of court,
>Intel now has fab rights to the Alpha (why DEC did this blows my mind,  It's
>like, let sue and deliberately loose). The Alpha will continue for a few more
>generations, as it is a better chip.  It currenlty beats what the Intel Merced
>will be when it finally ships.  And by then the Alpha will be even faster. And
>the DOJ is poised to file an anti-trust against Intel!  Next election I'm
>voting Democrat for the first time in my life.
Thanks, Adam.. this looks pretty accurate.  Among the other things DEC can't
do (like NOT sell things) you can count legal maneuvering and strategy. The
interaction between the two is a study in corporate folly, but that's been
sort of typical of DEC over the years. If they had not made so many mistakes
in both marketing and intellecetual property and rights protections, DEC might
have purchased Compaq, rather than the other way round.

                                                            Regards,
                                                            ---> RGB <---