Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!ece-csc!ncsuvx!gatech!rutgers!bellcore!clyde!att!cbnews!gwe From: gwe@cbnews.ATT.COM (George W. Erhart) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Computer for the rest of us? Message-ID: <1282@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 22 Sep 88 17:49:12 GMT References: <430043@hpcea.CE.HP.COM> <3600031@iuvax> <69545@sun.uucp> Reply-To: gwe@cbnews.ATT.COM (George W. Erhart) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus Lines: 28 In article <69545@sun.uucp> chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >>"A computer for the rest of us." >Are you sure you folks aren't living a Fantasy? I bought into the Macintosh >early. A 128K, two floppy system ran me $2800 (THAT early. I still have it, >it's still working every day, although now it's got two megs and a hard disk. >And is on it's third analog board....). My 512K upgrade ran me $700 or so. Hold on Chuq ... I, too, was an early purchaser of a Mac 128K. The thing that you are forgetting is that the equivalent IBM machine (the PC) fell in price and has always been cheaper to upgrade. I know that comparing the two machines is like comparing apples (pun) and oranges in terms of hardware and software. Personally, I have been waiting for an inexpensive color mac for some time now, but I am not going to pay $6000 for a Mac II. I am now considering a Mac+, 40 Meg Drive and Radius FPD, but that is still going to run $3000+ bucks. And now I have to worry about the Mac+ being unsupported (i.e. no longer manufactured) and uncompatible with furture software like my poor Mac 128K upgraded to 2 Meg via Levco. (And even with that, I am not getting color or more CPU.) One other thing, because of the price, the Mac is not the machine for the casual user. I do not use my machine enough to warrant a $6000 purchase. This is unfortunate, in that the Mac, with it's user interface, is the perfect machine for the casual user. -- George Erhart AT&T Network Systems/Bell Laboratories att!cbdkc1!gwe