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Technology Stocks : Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John M. Zulauf who wrote (3472)	11/6/1997 7:33:00 PM
From: vincent bilotta	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14451

John, do you think SGI can maintain two different pricing structures? today's 20% cut in the Octane's price (more if you have old 4D 210 endtables to get rid of) gets us a step closer to parity with mass market boxes. the sucess of SGI's NT box is mostly going to be based on how intense the enthusism and commitment of those selling it are. will it be two organisations dissing each other's product? too dumb/ too expensive? or like some past situations where the vested interest of the salesman made him push the big commission item? >Moore's law has caught up with them, and now what once could be done >only for $100,000+ can be done for ~ $5,000. A that price point, the >masses get involved, masses of buyers, and masses of ISV's -- and those masses have chosen NT is the real issue here detoxing from being on the wrong end of Moore's Law? weather or not NT was in the cards, wouldn't SGI have to recover from it's resentment against these apparent natural forces that make all this stuff more accessable? could they get ahead of the curve by building a Reality Monster for the masses? instead of $2M prototypes waiting for fab by Sony as a handheld, couldn't SGI, itself accelerate the UGSI (unbeleiveably gigantic scale integration) and in the process make a bundle? i mean, if SGI's already headed straight to hell (shopping malls) why not make a scene? can one be a little bit comodity? vincent

To: John M. Zulauf who wrote (3472)	11/6/1997 8:07:00 PM
From: Esvida	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14451

IMHO, it seems to be an oxymoron for a company which has deep understanding of the user's needs and at the same time is mired in deep do do. -Al

To: John M. Zulauf who wrote (3472)	11/6/1997 8:40:00 PM
From: Klaus B. Biggers	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14451

>First my belief (and I'm sure Justin's) is that any NT product SGI >builds will be of the best quality, rich technology, and excellent >performance for the market space it's in. It may be that we are >unhappy with the quality of the operating system from... <rest of excellent explanation snipped> John: Thanks for the excellent response. I think you have summarized it well. And thanks for the level headed nature as well. Your comments on this thread are always well thought out and civil unlike many others who simply cast off any question which doesn't worship SGI and denounce MS. Your points in this post make a lot of sense, but, don't you feel that some customer confusion will arise since what the customer has heard in the past from SGI sales is how bad NT is, how it will never work, and MS is an unethical monopoly? Now suddenly, they expect the customer to shift and believe that NT will work, it'll save the company, and collaboration with "the enemy" is a good thing. NT bashing has been a popular sport on most of the SGI technical mailing lists as well as newsgroups and now suddenly they reverse and state that NT maybe isn't so bad after all. You've got to admit that an employee stating that NT crashes every other time he uses it when SGI is trying to "execute, market, etc." an NT strategy is foolish at best. I can tell you from experience (all the way back from personal iris 4D20 or some such days up through the RE3 I work on now) as well as working on NT the last few years that such comments certainly don't shine a good light on the company since it merely points out the religious fanatisism some people have pro/con certain technologies. And my NT box stays up a lot longer than that 4D20 did. Comments such as that referenced above tells anyone that does know NT that that employee knows very little about it and is unwilling to learn. Yet somehow we are supposed to feel warm and fuzzy buying an NT product from them. And just for the record, I have no position in SGI. -klaus

To: John M. Zulauf who wrote (3472)	11/6/1997 10:11:00 PM
From: vincent bilotta	Respond to of 14451

John, i think you ended your message right to the point. >Now, can SGI execute, market etc. -- that's the $64 question, and one >the next CEO will answer -- anybody got Jim Clark's phone number? if Clark had won, you'd have a four processor Octane MXI today for $9K and NT never woulda happend as a contender. he saw this, and all around him were blind and arrogant. vincent

To: John M. Zulauf who wrote (3472)	11/7/1997 4:46:00 AM
From: Edward Smyth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14451

Message from John M. Zulauf on Nov 6 1997 6:58PM EST >First my belief (and I'm sure Justin's) is that any NT product SGI >builds will be of the best quality, rich technology, and excellent >performance for the market space it's in. It may be that we are >unhappy with the quality of the operating system from Microsoft >(it may be), but that is the user's choice, the user's voice, and >the user's perogative. As a SGI and Cray user, I would love to be able to afford a SGI workstation for home. I'm sure the SGI NT machine will be excellent but I don't want NT, I want Irix. Will SGI provide Irix boxes at the same price as the NT boxes? Or will the entry-level Irix box be a $17000 Octane? If that happens how will SGI maintain sufficient Irix volumes to attract the software developers? Will SGI support other OS'es (eg SCO, Solaris, Linux) on their Intel box? If the answer is yes, that will be a support nightmare for SGI. The best solution to this IMO is to have a common box that can either be configured as Irix/MIPS or NT/Intel. CPU, cache, OS/CPU specific BIOS stuff on a daughtercard, ALL other components identical. Pricing would be modular ie box/memory/disk/graphics + CPU card + OS One fear I do have is that SGI would charge a fortune for Irix. It would be much better if they charged exactly what MS charges for NT, thus the CPU would be the only price difference. People could then freely choose which OS they wanted. Higher end systems (Octane, Onyx2) would of course remain Irix based. Ed