DRAFT Agenda for SLUG/SMBX Meeting of 15 December

[Kenneth Forbus <forbus@A.CS.UIUC.EDU>]

       For workstations other vendors have been willing to offer very
       reasonable prices, generally less for a year's maintenance per machine
       than Symbolics wants for a month per machine.

   I believe maintenance on XL400 costs similar to maintenance on a
   comparable Sun (don't forget to include maintenance on the disk).

I don't know what XL400 costs are.  But I do know that "Replace
anything necessary to get it up within 24 hours, flying in parts if
necessary" from IBM for RT's costs $500/year/machine for universities,
$800/year/machine list.  That includes the CPU, three 310MB drives,
display, cartridge tape drive, etc.  If the XL400 price for this kind
of service is that cheap, I will certainly consider buying Symbolics
machines again.  Or if they go back to being several times faster than
the competition, as opposed to being slightly to signficantly behind
in performance.