Re: Anyone know why the Alpha market is so so quiet?

genius@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On May 18, 10:38 am, Andrew <andrew_harri...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Solaris really does have some unique capabilities when compared with
Linux and thats what seems to be driving the change, that plus clever
marketing by Sun.

Regards
Andrew Harrison- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


what is clever about giving away something for free?


What is clever about charging $1500 US for a VMS license for an Alphastation 200?

Sure, you get $1500 IF somebody buys the workstation for big bucks. People tend to look at the cost of the machine plus licenses and compare with the cost of a competing product.

How much does it cost for the Fortran Compiler license? How much for the development tools? How much for the performanace advisor (data collector and analyzer)? The software used to cost more than the hardware at least when DEC was still DEC.

Sun says the software is free, the O/S, the compilers, and the development tools. If you want to develop software for the Sun platform, it costs you the salary of the programmers and the price of the machines they use. You want hardware support? It's available for a price. Do you want software support? It, too, is available for a price. Maybe you use the software you develop in house or maybe you sell it, or both. However you choose to proceed, you are are developing software that runs on Sun's platform. You run it on Sun hardware and probably pay Sun for supoprt. If it's any good you can probably sell it. If you sell it, people buy Sun hardware to run it on, and probably pay Sun for both hardware and software support.

Crazy like a fox!

A case can be made that DEC priced itself right out of the market! DEC had good stuff but Sun, and others, proved that fast and cheap beats good every time. Solaris is not VMS by any means but it doesn't cost what VMS does and it gets the job done!


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