Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!fernwood!asylum!langz
From: langz@asylum.SF.CA.US (Lang Zerner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXT Policy
Message-ID: <5831@asylum.SF.CA.US>
Date: 29 Sep 89 22:23:43 GMT
References: <5572@tank.uchicago.edu>
Reply-To: langz@asylum.UUCP (Lang Zerner)
Organization: The Great Escape, Inc
Lines: 32

In article <5572@tank.uchicago.edu> phd_ivo@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes:
>[...kudos to next re: their egalitarian approach to warranty service]
>
>My one gripe is that (students listen) a one-year extended warranty
>is reputed to cost about $900. This is an awful lot for one of NeXT's
>target customers (students). 

If you have been following NeXT's actions in the marketing and development
areas and still believe that students are still NeXT's primary market, well,
you aren't playing close attention.  What vendors has NeXT signed on to develop
for the cube since the original announcement (this would rule out, say,
Wolfram)?  Lotus, Frame, etc. -- the roster reads like the MS-DOS and Sun top
30 list (except for Microsoft.  Heh).  

Point is, if NeXT is stressing business applications primarily, then businesses
are a primary target.  If they are not stressing academic/research applications
primarily, then academia is not a primary target (would-be flamers note: I did
*not* say that academia is not a target, just that it doesn't appear to be a
primary one).

>Failure to give long or cheap warranties clearly signals that NeXT does not
>believe its hardware is reliable to new buyers.

I don't know how long the standard NeXT warranty is, but if it is 90 days or
more, it is plenty long.  And, student financial hardships notwithstanding,
$900 is not much to pay for a year's service contract.  Businesses and research
labs both pay ten-fold that amount for similar service on many similar systems.
-- 
Be seeing you...
--Lang Zerner
langz@asylum.sf.ca.us   UUCP:bionet!asylum!langz   ARPA:langz@athena.mit.edu
"...and every morning we had to go and LICK the road clean with our TONGUES!"