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
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