Symbolics Germany prices

[baechler%liasun4.epfl.ch@Warbucks.AI.SRI.COM (Emmanuel Baechler)]

>   We are also concerned by the high prices of Symbolics in Germany.  How
>   come it's *twice* the price in the US?  I would be very surprised that
>   taxes and transportation (+insurance, even) cost the price of the
>   goods...  We need Symbolics machines, but at these prices, we are
>   *forced* to look for alternative solutions, with the overhead of
>   migrating.  We would just love to be able to buy production symbolics
>   machines at the same prices as the other manufacturers machines...
> [...]
>
>   To give you an idea of the fun we have in Europe:
>   - MacIvory model 2 processor board (40 bit Ivory processor, 8Mo NUBUS
>   memory) => $25000 (approx)
>   - Genera 8.0 Ivory dev system => $13000

> I completely agree with you - Symbolics seems to be an American company,
>for American customers. The support, prices, and delivery conditions in
>Europe appears to be very different from the conditions in US.  I am
>particularly disappointed with the near total lack of customer support
>(e.g. no info about new releases, ridiculous maintenance costs, no SW
>expertise etc. etc.).

  I must also agree on this. Here we had to drop our HW maintainance
contracts because the adminstration considered them much too expensive
and refused to pay for them. We still have the software ones and we were
able to buy an UXS1200 a few month ago, but the adminstrative pressure
is always stronger. I know that this problem is not specific to Europe,
but the current practice of Symbolics Germany makes things even worse
than in the U.S. How can you blame an adminstrator who refuse you the
credit for a Symbolics when you can get a Sparc Station for $6000 and
when you get a Lisp Environnment almost for free because we have a
site license? I know that the environnment of my Symbolics is still
fundamentally better than what I can find on a standard Unix box, but the
price difference is so big that this argument becomes irrelevant for
the people who have the money.

Emmanuel Baechler
baechler@liasun6.epfl.ch