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From: barr@pineapple.bbn.com (Hunter Barr)
Newsgroups: misc.invest,comp.misc,comp.lang.lisp,comp.ai,comp.sys.xerox
Subject: Re: Symbolics stock
Message-ID: <870@papaya.bbn.com>
Date: 1 Jun 88 22:21:46 GMT
References: <57@daitc.ARPA> <33064@linus.UUCP> <692@esl.UUCP>
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In article <692@esl.UUCP> ssh@esl.UUCP (Sam) writes:
>->marsh@mbunix (Ralph Marshall) sez ->




I'm no investment expert, but it looks to me like you have Symbolics
confused with LMI.  LMI hung on at the edge of bankruptcy for a very
long time, whereas Symbolics seems to gave plenty of cash to see them
through this development cycle and into the next one.  All the
indications are that the coming batch of hardware and software is very
solid.  

Symbolics is taking exactly the right steps to get out of the "box"
business, by putting their effort into the Ivory chip and their
software development.  As someone who uses Symbolics Lisp Machines
regularly (as well as VAXen, SUN workstations, and other machines), I
can tell you that their latest release of software (Genera 7.2) shows
that they are responsive to the demands of the market:

    It contains many popular improvements and enhancements.

    It was delivered on time.

    It marks the return of the "source included" policy, with a very
    reasonable price.  It actually contains more of the source than
    7.1 even without the fee!

I don't have enough money to outfit my VAX or SUN like a Lispm; the
memory, software, and OS source-code licenses are far too expensive.
Moreover, it is obviously going to be a couple of years until the
development tools on these machines catch up to where Lispms are now.
(I am betting on Saber C, but maybe SUN's SPE will surprise us.)

If I did have that much money, I would buy more Symbolics stock.  I
think the only way they are going out of business is if they are
bought by Sony, or DEC, or a very big defense contractor.

In almost every large project on which I've worked, there has been
some component which was best implemented on Symbolics machines,
usually for its development environment, but sometimes for the unique
hardware itself.  I will continue to recommend them where they are the
best solution, which I expect to be often.

                            ______
                            HUNTER