Re: NeXT and Cannon
- To: mathgroup at yoda.physics.unc.edu
- Subject: Re: NeXT and Cannon
- From: mek at guinan.psu.edu (Mark E. Kotanchek)
- Date: Fri, 12 Feb 93 15:07:04 -0500
Elias writes,
I would appreciate any comments about the recent news of NeXT
selling its hardware to Cannon. Does this mean the beginning of
the end of the NeXT machines?
What is going to all of us who invested in teaching classroms
that we equipped with NeXT machines to teach Calculus and
Mathematica?
Regards, Elias Saab
mathes at esaab.cs.missouri.edu
I don't have any inside information; however, it is doubtful that
Canon bought that factory to make cameras. The NeXTstation
(CannonStation?) is still a nice piece of hardware and will kick the
butt of a PC 486 machine so for campus lab purposes it is still
probably the best choice. (This statement is due to the 68040 being a
better processor--e.g, 5 MFLOPS vs 1 MFLOPS for the 486--as well as
having a architecture which offloads tasks from the CPU.)
Thus, I suspect the slabs will still be available as well as the
long-rumored RISC machine coming out. The big plus is that we should
soon be able to buy an HP RISC screamer running NeXTstep so we can
have our number-crunching capability as well as a reasonable user
interface.
IMHO,
Mark.
---
Mark Kotanchek
Guidance & Control Dept - 363 ASB
Applied Research Lab/Penn State
P.O. Box 30
State College, PA 16804
e-mail: mek at guinan.psu.edu (NeXTmail)
TEL: (814)863-0682
FAX: (814)863-7843