Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!ll-xn!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!apollo!ulowell!hawk!rsilvers From: rsilvers@hawk.ulowell.edu (Robert Silvers) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Comments on NeXT. Message-ID: <9291@swan.ulowell.edu> Date: 24 Sep 88 20:45:00 GMT Sender: news@swan.ulowell.edu Reply-To: rsilvers@hawk.ulowell.edu (Robert Silvers) Organization: University of Lowell, CS Dept Lines: 30 I assume that by "erasable" they mean that the optical disk can be erased, but can it be re-written? I dont believe anyone has done this before, except for the Tandy thor drive, but that could only be written to 30 or so times, and is 1-2 years away from release. Would Jobs really sell this computer with a write-once disk as the main means of storage? I also heard that optical disks were much slower than hard disks. I would rather see this ship with a 120 Meg hard disk, and later add an optical disk when the technology is more reliable. I would also prefer a seperate monitor. What happens when I want to add a color display? I have to either have it external, or have a dealer swap them (with an official NeXT display, not my choice of after- market ones.) He is able to control the price and profits by making it hard for others to market monitors for it. What about when I want to upgrade X-Windows? I cant simply get a copy of the new version, I have to buy the official NeXT ROMS. 15 Megs of ROMS + dealer markup= $$$. He learned from the mistakes of the Mac by adding expansion slots, but also learned that if you make things like the display and ROMs proprietary, you can control the prices. Any comments on this? I may be wrong. --Rob. Robert Silvers. Box #1003 University of Lowell. Lowell Ma, 01854 (617) 452-8823 Rm. 322 "Live free or live in Massachusetts."