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Date:      Thu, 5 Feb 1998 12:38:18 -0600 (CST)
From:      Jim Bryant <jbryant@unix.tfs.net>
To:        freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD/Alpha (Fwd)
Message-ID:  <199802051838.MAA03148@unix.tfs.net>

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----- Forwarded message from jbryant -----

>From jbryant Thu Feb  5 12:35:11 1998
Subject: Re: FreeBSD/Alpha
In-Reply-To: <E191A8FCC38DD111A84900E029115B40A1F6@OCTOPUS> from Paul Richards at "Jan 30, 98 12:39:04 pm"
To: paul@originat.demon.co.uk (Paul Richards)
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 12:35:12 -0600 (CST)
Reply-to: jbryant@argus.tfs.net
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In reply:
> Unfortunately I don't think so. All I've read over the last few days,
> not all
> relating to Compaq's aquisition, looks very bad for commercial Unix.
> From
> the press releases I've seen from Compaq the main benefit of the
> aquisition is
> Digital's support infrastructure. Digital had already shed large parts
> of it's corporation.
> The alpha chip looked doomed anyhow, the fabrication side of the
> business had been sold
> to Intel and Digital had already stated that they yould be supporting
> the IA-64 chip in the
> future. They've also sold off their networking arm as well. It looked to
> me at the time like
> they were shedding parts of the company that a prospective buyer didn't
> want in order to make
> them more attractive to said buyer.

[blah blah blah]

> In other reports (all my reports are from CNET by the way, get lots of
> useful news if you subscrib to their daily

Why not check what Digital has to say?

http://www.digital.com/alphaserver/news/1000mhz_298.html

for instance...  [I just got that in the "AlphaServer Update"
today]...  sounds to me like DEC is into Alpha for the LONG-TERM...

> mailings) it looks like Unix sales are in very serious decline. NT
> outsold unix by a huge margin last year (I forget the figures but you

Yes.  And PCs also outsold large systems by a very similar
percentage...

NT has it's place.  Unix has it's place...  NT will die if it attempts
to take over the performance market, it is not capable of doing it
efficiently and reliably like Unix and Guardian are.

Business is business...  Spend $50k - $1 million+ on a system and you
will not be running NT, now or in the future on that system.  It's a
reliability issue, and a bang for the buck issue.  Yes, NT can run
fast on a fast system, but Unix will run FASTER on the same system,
and more reliably too!

NT makes a great office fileserver system...  Leave it to Unix and
Guardian to handle performance tasks...  Most of the PC dweebs out
there just don't understand the performance computing market, I
guess...

Got to go...  Getting ready for some MC/ServiceGuard cluster
configuration changes tonight [yes, unix!  HP/UX to be exact]...

jim
-- 
All opinions expressed are mine, if you    |  "I will not be pushed, stamped,
think otherwise, then go jump into turbid  |  briefed, debriefed, indexed, or
radioactive waters and yell WAHOO !!!      |  numbered!" - #1, "The Prisoner"
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