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From: evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch)
Subject: Re: Unix for PC
Message-ID: <D0sBu6.How@telly.on.ca>
Organization: Sound Software Ltd., Brampton, Ontario
References: <3bvmo1$hgr@cascade.pnw.net> <rbbrownD0I2uB.HID@netcom.com> <D0JyKq.1r5@telly.on.ca> <bryD0rLL2.8AL@netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 1994 05:13:18 GMT
Lines: 99
In article <bryD0rLL2.8AL@netcom.com>, Bryan Althaus <bry@netcom.com> wrote:
>: As of *today*, the wholesale cost of the Solaris 2.1 uniprocessor desktop
>: is exactly 48.3% more expensive than the combination of UnixWare Personal
>: Edition, SDK and NFS. Add C2 Auditing and UnixWare is still less.
>Why Solaris 2.1? Solaris 2.4 is the current shipping product.
Sigh. It was a typo. I had a choice of cancelling the article and
re-posting it, or letting it go and hoping that it could be debated on
merits rather than this kind of triviality. (Trivial, in the sense of
price *only*, that is what this corner of the thread is dealing with,
right?)
>It
>retails for $450 2-user license with a complete system ready to go.
I stand behind what I said, based on dealer pricing, apples to apples.
If Sunsoft sells Solaris direct for less than they sell it to retailers,
that just goes even further to tell me just how much Sun loves its VARs :-(.
(Current wholesale price of (that is, the cost of a retailer or VAR to buy
it) Solaris 2.4 uniprocessor desktop license, according to Merisel is
$660CDN (about $471US). That is significantly higher than Merisel's
equivalent price for the UnixWare bundle of PE+SDK+NFS.
>: UnixWare also allows the bare-bones PE to turn Intel hardware into a
>: capable X terminal for 31% of the cost of Solaris' desktop. What is
>: one person's "woeful" incompleteness is another person's flexibility
>: of not being forced to buy everything for a minimal configuration.
>: Debates about bundling-versus-unbundling invariably degenerate into
>: religious arguments.
>Try using UnixWare in a non UnixWare environment with say Sun's. Try
>bringing up some applications on SunOS or Solaris and you will see
>alot won't since this font is missing or that. When I ran UnixWare
>I could never get SunOS's debugger to come up on UnixWare as well as alot
>of other programs. Switching to solaris 2.4 solved that.
I'm curious to know if people have similar problem with other
Motif-based systems in a Sun environment. Maybe the problems are
within Sun, not the rest of the world. It makes sense that if Sun
builds something somewhat proprietary into their systems, that
they make a good case for sticking with Solaris on Intel boxes.
This speaks nothing for inherant superiority.
>: I agree with the comment about NIS, though. Wasn't it included in the
>: 1.1.2 update whether you had NFS installed or not?
>Little late in the game no? Most consider NIS important enough not to
>have to wait 1 1/2 years for it.
(When it's not out, they complain, when it's out they still complain it
took so long; I guess they'll always find something to bitch about :-).
I strongly disagree with your use of the term 'most'. I think
you're flat-out *wrong*, in fact. Have you done a poll? Market
research? Tried to sell a product?
I'd suggest that the bulk of Intel Unix systems now in the field
(certainly a clear majority of the ones I've seen) don't even have
an Ethernet board installed.
Not everyone shares Sun's (or Novell's, for that matter) worship of the LAN.
>: >And the two-user Solaris is complete. Period.
>: Unless you want the driver development kit; bundled with the UnixWare
>: SDK, $300 more for Solaris. While the driver stuff is certainly
>: not something that everyone wants, "complete...period" is clearly
>: incorrect because there *is* some unbundling. Sun's just drawn the
>: line at a different spot.
>This is silly. If a Solaris person was to suggest that UnixWare wasn't
>complete because it didn't come with a DDK, you Evan would say your
>average user could care less. Funny you consider a DDK shipping with
>UnixWare more important that say NIS(+) or NFS.
Did I say that? Where?
All I'm stating is that arguments of "completeness" here are the same
kind of stupidity I ran into about two years ago when fans of Dell Unix
were bashing SCO, Esix and others because Dell bundled in the SDK and X
while others left these elements optional. Somehow the bundling issue
made one *vendor* more complete than the other. Utter hogwash.
My point is that bundling-versus-unbundling arguments, no matter where a
company draws the line, are a waste of bandwidth and accomplish
absolutely nothing regarding any real discussion of competitive advantage.
It crosses the line from real feature comparisons to nyah-nyah-nyah
displays. No thanks.
You wanna turn that around and say that I favour one kind of bundling to
another go ahead, and find out what really looks silly.
--
Evan Leibovitch, Sound Software Ltd., located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario
Novell Unix Master Reseller / evan@telly.on.ca / (905) 452-0504
Are vegetarians allowed to eat animal crackers?