$2K Sun SPARC "Campus Machine"???!!!

[Brent Chapman]

# I have come upon some information about a potential NeXT killer, and I
# wonder if anyone has heard anything about it.  The two data I ran across
# are:
# 
# - in the Sun Observer of about 3 weeks ago an article was telling about
# the speakers at a recent conference.  They quoted Bill Joy as saying one
# of Sun's "primary" thrusts is to market a "Campus Machine".  The article
# mentioned a base price of $2K, but did not have information about hard
# disks and other configuration information.

"Campus" was the development codename for the SPARCStation-1.  My latest
pricelist shows the list price for the cheapest SPARCStation-1 to be $8995
(diskless, 8MB RAM, 17-inch monochrome monitor).  I don't know how much of
a discount educational sites can get from Sun, but I'd be kind of amazed
if it were enough to bring the price of an $9k-list machine down to $2k;
$3k _maybe_, if you buy in large quantities.  But that's just a guess on
my part; I'm not an educational site, and don't know what Sun's pricing
policies for such sites are.

# - in the June 4 or 5 issue of (?computer week) it mentioned in passing a
# deal of a few weeks prior where Toshiba will be makeing a SPARC machine,
# supposedly at a good price.

My understanding is that Sun has licensed SPARC to Toshiba, and that
Toshiba will be producing _someth ing_ SPARC based, but that such a product
is still many months, if not a year or more, away from market.


-Brent
--
Brent Chapman					Capital Market Technology, Inc.
Computer Operations Manager			1995 University Ave., Suite 390
brent at capmkt.com				Berkeley, CA  94704
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