avoiding obsolescence

[Mike Caplinger]

Reading this list, one frequently sees exhortations to buy more memory,
get a faster processor, or otherwise totally replace one's hardware in
order to "keep up" with the latest SunOS release.  A recent message, for
example, speculated that 12 MIPS and 16 Meg was going to be the minimal
usable configuration for SunOS/Xview, and my experience so far supports
that guess.  Some of us, however, can't afford the luxury of trading up to
a new CPU every 18 months.

Sure, one can stick at some release of SunOS, like all the 3/50 users more
or less sticking at 3.5, but neither Sun nor third-party software vendors
makes this very desirable.  Would it be remotely possible for Sun to
continue maintaining release M.X when M+1.X was out in the marketplace?
(Given current trends, maybe that should be release 4.M and 4.M+1, or even
release 4.0.M and 4.0.M+1 ;-)  Wouldn't it be nice if only they could?
Are there enough forces in the marketplace to make this kind of parallel
development possible?  What if some third party did it?

The sad thing is, I remember when a 2-meg 68010 Sun configuration was
usable, and even though I have a 20-meg Sun 4 now, I don't think I've
gotten an order of magnitude better performance, from a whole-system
perspective.

	Mike Caplinger, ASU/Caltech Mars Observer Camera Project

p.s.  Maybe all the software developers at Sun should be given Sun 2s, and
made to use them.