3/50 --> 3/60 upgrade versus NeXT purchase

[Bruce Samuelson]

In reference to the recent Sun announcement in 7.123, let's consider the
hypothetical case of a university department deciding between package 1 (a
3/50 --> 3/60 8MB upgrade) and package 2 (purchasing an 8MB NeXT and
keeping the used 4MB 3/50).

Assumptions:

1) Cost of a bottom end NeXT:	$6500 price to university computer store
				$1300 20% markup (purely hypothetical)
				$7800 total cost to university department

2) Cost of UG3/60-8F upgrade:	$6650 retail price
   (3/50 cpu --> 3/60 cpu	$1995 30% univ. discount (purely hypothetical;
    with 8 MB)			      based on our last purchase from Sun
				      in 1987; may be out of date)
				$4655 total cost to university department

3) For simplicity, assume none of the machines has a winchester disk.
(The NeXT prices are $2000 for 330MB or $4000 for $660MB.)

4) Assume the specs below are accurate.  I got them from a MacWEEK
magazine and from Sun and NeXT brochures.  Especially uncertain ones have
question marks.

			Package 1	Package 2a	Package 2b
			3/60 upgrade	Buy new NeXT	and keep used 3/50

cpu			20MHz 68020	25MHz 68030	15 MHz 68020
floating point		20MHz 68881?	25MHz 68882	15? MHz 68881 (opt)
digital signal processor none		25MHz 56001	none
memory			8MB		8MB		4MB
bus			VME		25MHz? Nubus	VME
expansion slots		0		4 (3 available)	0
dma channels		?		12		?
ethernet port		yes		yes		yes
SCSI port		yes		yes		yes
RS 423 serial ports	2?		0		2
	(19.2K baud)
LocalTalk serial ports	0		2		0
	(230K? baud)
microphone input port	0		1		0
sound output ports	0		2		0
mono display size	19"		17"		19"
resolution		1152 x 900	1120 x 832	1152 x 900
greyscale bits		1		2		1
removable optical	none		256MB		none
	disk (r/w)
Unix			SunOS		Mach 0.8	SunOS
NFS			yes		yes		yes


Other software bundled with NeXT: NextStep object-oriented development
environment using Stepstone Objective C, Mathematica, Allegro Common Lisp,
Sybase SQL database server, Webster's dictionary, Webster's thesaurus,
email with voice and image support, Jot (personal dbms), WriteNow (word
processor), Digital Librarian (a text indexing tool), and miscellaneous
other s/w.

Cost			$4655?		$7800?		none

Comments: Sun has a clear advantage over NeXT in the maturity of their OS,
availability of 3rd party s/w and h/w, and probably in their support of
standards (NeXT apparently will try to set some new ones).  However, for
those of you who don't mind rhetorical questions, let me pose one: If you
were a university customer whose h/w and s/w needs could be met by either
a NeXT purchase or a Sun upgrade, which package would you choose?