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

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article <i4lj8j$icg$02$1 at news.t-online.com>, Michael Kraemer
<M.Kraemer at gsi.de> writes: 

> I don't think the price gap between Alpha hardware
> and contemporary RISC hardware (POWER,PA,Sparc,Mips)
> was a factor of ten. With the advent of Alpha,
> which happened about the same time Palmer became
> boss, DEC started to charge more reasonable prices.

Most definitely not.  DEC, HP, IBM, SGI and SUN were all similarly
priced, hardwire-wise.  IIRC even software costs were approximately the
same.  Compiler licenses etc might have been more with DEC, but then the 
compilers were better.

I think what hurt DEC the most was the move to unix, which was mainly 
down to DEC not marketing VMS strongly enough, in particularly not 
taking steps to stop the move away from VMS in academia.  Of course, 
academia itself doesn't make a profit, but most people don't stay in 
academia and later decide what to buy.