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Date:      Tue, 16 Jul 1996 12:17:20 -0700
From:      Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>
To:        dennis@etinc.com (Dennis)
Cc:        hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: mitsumi CD-ROM 
Message-ID:  <199607161917.MAA03813@lestat.nas.nasa.gov>

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On Tue, 16 Jul 1996 13:56:35 -0400 
 dennis@etinc.com (Dennis) wrote:

 > Yeah, when you're spending taxpayers dollars those high-end 'puters
 > are real nice! :-)

For the record, I don't particularly appreciate this comment, especially 
on a public mailing list.

 > With every purchase, a good consumer makes a value judgement. Frankly
 > I get more utility out of 5 PCs than I do with 1 of whatever you recommend...
 > particularly when its my money.

...sort of hard to do when I haven't actually recommended anything here 
on this list.  Actually, I did recommend the purchase of some PCs for our 
Data Communcations Laboratory.  They're pretty high-end PCs, but that doesn't 
mean they don't suck.  They were recommended mostly because they're 
fairly cheap, and they run NetBSD really well.  (Don't try to convert me; 
I have Sparcs and Alphas in the lab, as well :-)

It's clear that I'm going to have to justify my comment... One of the big 
reasons I think PCs suck is because there's so much hackish hardware for 
them.  SCSI gear is _not_ that much more expensive, and the benefits of 
using SCSI are far greater than the (small) additional cost.

If we're going to perpetuate the use of a really lame (IMHO) architecture 
such as the x86, then we might as well try to break the cycle of hanging 
hackish hardware off of it.

 > IDE drives are just fine and darn convenient, considering all most people do
 > with them is load a distribution or pull something off an archive. And for
 > $65. a piece for a 6X drive they're practically disposable.

I fail to see value in "disposable" hardware.  That's just wasteful.  In 
the long-run, you end up spending _more_ than you did on just one piece 
of good hardware.

 -- save the ancient forests - http://www.bayarea.net/~thorpej/forest/ -- 
Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center                               Home: 408.866.1912
NAS: M/S 258-6                                          Work: 415.604.0935
Moffett Field, CA 94035                                Pager: 415.428.6939



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