[Info-vax] HP wins Oracle Itanium case

[VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG]

In article <rETYr.14427$NK4.4937 at fx24.am4>, ChrisQ <meru at devnull.com> writes:
>On 08/21/12 20:21, Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
>
>> Could have beens don't count for much. Pure and simple, DEC blew it! DEC
>> totally missed the desk top revolution! By "desk top" I mean both X86
>> and Alpha workstations. Yes, I know about the Rainbow. DEC was asking
>> totally outrageous prices. Just about everyone could sell at a profit
>> for far less than DEC was asking. People bought their Desktops on price
>> and DEC could not or would not compete. Bye-bye DEC.
>>
>
>If you take the lid off a Rainbow, it's obvious why it was so expensive. It
>was engineered the same way DEC engineered the pdp11 or Vax. Very high 
>quality
>hardware and quality multilayer boards, but just too much hardware and 
>capability
>(separate z80 to run cpm etc, iirc)  inside the box to compete with the 
>likes of
>Compaq, or heck, even IBM pc's. They got the message later with Alpha 
>desktops:
>commodity psu's. keyboards, peripherals etc and lean design, but perhaps 
>then
>it was too late.

I think Rainbow was well ahead of Compaq.  If you look at the prices of
the IBM 5150 -- and what a piece of junk it was -- in the same era, it 
wasn't cheap either.  The Rainbow was far superior in its capabilities
to the 5150.


-- 
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.