[Info-vax] In memoriam: 10 years since Alpha's passing away.

[Neil Rieck]

>
> H-P *Sells* those manuals.  The last time I looked, a VMS documentation
> kit filled four or five feet of shelf space.  The last time I bought
> one, I think I paid close to $2000 US.
>
> There's more than paper and ink to be paid for; H-P paid people to write
> the manuals, proof read them, etc, etc.
>
> I suspect that manuals are a significant source of revenue!
>
"I think" the Canadian price (circa 1990) was 2.5k to 4.5k with the
higher price getting you the subscription updates. Every couple of
months you would receive a packet of update pages telling you which
pages need to be replaced. Some offices just put the updates in a box
while others assigned the job to an office clerk.

Imagine the infrastructure required at DEC, as well as the customer
end, to manage this mess. Then Compaq fixed it all by moving
everything to 1-3 CD-ROMS (one ROM was for windows; two (IIRC) were
VMS formatted for mounting in the infoserver). With this paradigm you
just throw away the old ROM and replace it with a new one.
Alternatively, you access online docs via the internet.

NSR