[Info-vax] Happy new Year !

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 09-01-2010 11:08, Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
>> Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On 06-01-2010 03:31, Michael Kraemer wrote:
>>>> Richard B. Gilbert schrieb:
>>>>> In some cases I might be able to buy software to do under VMS some of
>>>>> the things I now do under windows. I would expect to have to pay ten
>>>>> to two hundred times the price of similar software for my PC and get a
>>>>> poorer product! The size of the market is too damned small for
>>>>> economies of scale.
>>>>
>>>> That's the situation as it is now,
>>>> but it wasn't ten or fifteen years ago,
>>>> when the decision was made to let go VMS as a desktop system.
>>>
>>> VMS were long out of the desktop market 10 years ago.
>>
>> VMS was NEVER really a player in the desktop market. IBM and the clone
>> makers had that sewn up in the late 1980's or early 90's!
>>
>> DEC's offering was insanely priced as were their prices for things like
>> floppy disks; not the drives, the disks themselves! DEC wanted something
>> like ten times the market price. Very few were willing to pay such a
>> premium!
> 
> In the 80's PC's were pretty expensive as well.
> 
> I have seen IBM PC keyboards being sold for 500 USD.
> 
> (side note: they were pretty good though)
> 
> At that time VT220 and VT320 were used at universities,
> offices etc..
> 
> It was a significant desktop presence.
> 
> But 20 years ago.
> 
> Arne
> 

The "rot" was beginning to show even then.  DEC still dreamed of getting 
a piece of IBM's mainframe business.  I was still at Princeton in 1990 
and the handwriting was on the wall.  DEC wanted us to start paying for 
stuff we had been getting for free and reduce educational discounts. 
When DEC got us all together to discuss the transition, one big group 
(Plasma Physics??) decided that they would rather do without support 
than pay for it.  This of course raised the price to the rest of us. 
Another group bailed out and it avalanched!

A year or two after that Princeton's DECUS LUG fell apart.  Efforts to 
resuscitate it failed.