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From: news@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Usenet netnews)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Many Questions/ some answers
Message-ID: <1373@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: Thu, 18-Dec-86 20:17:33 EST
Article-I.D.: cit-vax.1373
Posted: Thu Dec 18 20:17:33 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 19-Dec-86 02:52:10 EST
References: <650@imsvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: tim@tomcat.caltech.edu (Tim Kay)
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 46
Summary: really?

Organization : California Institute of Technology
Keywords: 
From: tim@tomcat.Caltech.Edu (Tim Kay)
Path: tomcat!tim

In article <650@imsvax.UUCP> ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) writes:
>The clones cost about half or a third what IBM's do and they (the
>clones) don't break.  IBM must be wishing they'd never heard the words
>"PC" or "micro-computer" along about now.  Without IBM's interference,
>micros would never have achieved the standardization which is now
>allowing them to challenge minis and mainframes.  And IBM?  They
>invented the PC/DOS game and now they can't even play their own game
>successfully and the game is threatening to destroy their big Fortune
>500 mainframe business.  Kind of like letting the genie out of the
>bottle.

You've said several very interesting things here.  First of all,
which is more reliable, IBM or compatibles?  Business people often
think that, if you buy a machine from IBM, it must be more reliable
than a machine from some small company.  And I have seen many a flakey
clone.  However, I have also seen many lemons from IBM.  Big Blue seems
to have very poor quality control regarding their PCs.  They also offer
(by recent standards) an unreasonably short warranty and a very
expensive maintenance contract.  I am beginning to think that IBM
equipment might cost more to keep running.

Next, I can't see how PCs are competing with minis and mainframes.  An
80[23]86 at 8 or even 16Mhz still doesn't pack a fraction of the
computing power of a Vax 11/780.  And, for the work I do, a Vax is
a small machine.  A 3090/400 is roughly 50 times as powerful.

Finally, what is the PC/DOS game?  I would attribute the fall in
IBM's stock prices to their inability to innovate.  They have been
playing the object-code compatibility game for a long time now.
But in recent years, software manufacturer's have figured out how
to write large programs that aren't dependent upon a particular
architecure.  In other words, IBM's monopoly has finially been
broken by companies that have figured paths of access to IBM's
customers.  On the other hand, IBM is a LONG way from dead.  Just
because their sales didn't live up to their optimistic projections
doesn't mean they are in trouble.

Timothy L. Kay				tim@csvax.caltech.edu
Department of Computer Science
Caltech, 256-80
Pasadena, CA  91125