[Info-vax] Out with Hurd, in with OpenVMS

[Richard B. Gilbert]

seasoned_geek wrote:
> On Aug 15, 9:54 am, Michael Kraemer <M.Krae... at gsi.de> wrote:
>> Neil Rieck schrieb:
>>
>>> On Aug 9, 5:47 pm, seasoned_geek <rol... at logikalsolutions.com> wrote:
>>>> We can only hope they bring someone in who actually understands what
>>>> they have.
>>>> Maybe we can petition for them to bring in Ken Olsen?
>>> Now this is the best thing I've seen suggested in the newsgroup in a
>>> long time. Why Olsen? He ran DEC from 1956 to 1992
>> ... and into the ground.
>>
>>> and only posted two
>>> quarterly losses.
>> after which he was ousted and left Palmer the mess
>> that finally killed DEC.
>>
>>> How many companies can make this claim today?
>> What claim? DEC wrote a lot of red ink in the 1990s.
>>
>>
>>
>>> Neil Rieck
>>> Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
>>> Ontario, Canada.
>>> http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/OpenVMS.html
> 
> Palmer was the mess that finally killed DEC

I think that is a vast oversimplification.  DEC was a company out of 
control!  There was a corporate "vision" of becoming the new IBM.

DEC could not or would not compete on price.  Purchasing departments 
around the world could not see spending seven or eight times the price 
of third party hardware for genuine DEC.

I used to own a DEC Rainbow.  A hard disk for it cost something like 
$2200 from DEC.  I paid for $300 for a third party drive that worked 
perfectly.  DEC wanted $700 for the memory chips to "max it out".  I 
wound up paying $32 for third party RAM chips that worked perfectly.

DEC wanted $5000 for an X86 machine.  The world was paved with competing 
hardware at $1000-2000.  DEC designed a unique floppy drive and 
contended that only 5-1/4" floppy disks sold by DEC would work.  That 
worked only until somebody wrote a program to do the DEC style format on 
third party hardware.   People didn't buy DEC's $5 floppy disks!

The world changed and DEC failed to change with it!

DEC killed DEC!

Palmer just made the funeral arrangements!