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