Symbolics Germany prices

[<@nrb.be@mcsun.EU.net>]

Date: Tue, 27 Aug 91 16:16+0100
From: Vincent Keunen <keunen@milou.nrb.be>
Subject: Symbolics Germany prices
To: INFO-MCL@CAMBRIDGE.APPLE.COM
cc: uucp%"info-mcl@cambridge.apple.com"@nrbv01, eric@milou.nrb.be
Message-ID: <19910827151626.1.KEUNEN@milou.nrb.be>
          
          Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 13:37 CDT
          From: Shepard@MCKENZIE.S&C.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM (Tom Shepard)
          
          
          It all depends on how long you intend to be programming, or how long
          management intends to stay in business.  If management only makes
          decisions based on absolute cost, maybe they don't know how to make
          Return-On-Investment calculations.  
          
Our company is doing well, thank you (it's not because of the symbolics
we have, though).  Still, our management (which is also taking the
decisions for the other parts of the company that bring money, ie
IBM9000 & so on) doesn't fully agree/understand your simple formulas...
 
I agree the Genera environment is very good and I like it very much.
However, it's still far from ideal, when I consider the *weeks* we
spent debugging dna and recently cterm - just because Symbolics Germany
doesn't even know what these packages are for...  But they know what
software maintenance for dna is (in terms of DM I mean)...
 
If Genera is better AND much more expensive; what's the big deal?
Having a better environment for the *same* price - that would be much
more appealing!  And wouldn't it allow Symbolics to get a critical
market share, which it needs badly for lowering production costs?
 
Now, in your formulas, just put these elements:
 
- MacIvory + Genera = $38000
   (plus Macintosh price)
 
- Macintosh Common Lisp = $400
   (plus Macintosh price)
 
Now do you really think Genera + Ivory is worth 95 times MCL???
 
MCL is definitely not as good as Genera, but it still is cltl2
compatable (although beta), has good programming utilities (thru M. Kant
work, notably, like defsystem, who-calls database, a metering system, a
compare sources,...), a much better interface designer than Frame-up,
access to Macintosh resources like the communication Toolbox for easy
networking, a pretty good emacs-like editor, a good compiler (soon
incremental), etc...
 
Now do you *really* think Genera + Ivory is worth *95* times MCL???
 
 
Vincent Keunen
keunen@nrb.be