[Info-vax] RealWorldTech on Poulson

[Richard B. Gilbert]

On 7/4/2011 6:00 PM, John Wallace wrote:
> On Jul 4, 10:40 pm, hel... at astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---
> undress to reply) wrote:
>> In article
>> <db641605-1816-415e-9a4b-109629d4e... at v12g2000vby.googlegroups.com>,
>>
>> John Wallace<johnwalla... at yahoo.co.uk>  writes:
>>> By the time the DIGITAL Personal Workstation(433, 500 and 600MHz,
>>> fwiw) came out, the basic prices were reasonably competitive compared
>>> with similarly configured UNIX workstations from other vendors (sorry,
>>> no references right now).
>>
>> I remember once we had about DM 150,000 or so and wanted to buy the most
>> computing power possible.  This was about 1995 (we reckoned DM 100 per
>> MB for RAM, just to keep things in perspective; times have changed!).
>> At the time, we had only early-1990s RS6000 machines.  So, we got test
>> machines from IBM, DEC, HP, SUN and SGI and ran our own applications on
>> them.  The SUN was quick on an application which was I/O bound,
>> otherwise HP and DEC were much better than the other three.  We went
>> with DEC (ALPHAstation 500) because the compilers were better than HP's.
>> So, this was DEC getting a new customer based purely on
>> price/performance (and compiler quality) when running the customer's own
>> (self-written) applications.
>>
>> What went wrong?
>
> What went wrong?
>
> You bought value. Most people bought cheap. Most people didn't know or
> care about the difference.

The plain and simple fact was that DEC was living in a dream world. 
They missed the PC revolution.

When they finally got into the PC business they priced themselves out of 
the market.  DEC charged fantastic prices for the Rainbow.  I recall 
that DEC wanted something like $700 for 32MB of RAM.  I got brand X RAM 
chips for $32!  They worked just fine.  The 20MB disk drive was 
something like $2000.  I bought "Brand X" for $300.  And so on!!

DEC was either unwilling or unable to compete on price.  The market 
rolled right over them!  It's a miracle that DEC lasted as long as it 
did!  R.I.P. DEC.