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To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (4796)	4/29/1998 1:37:00 AM
From: Eli Lauris	Respond to of 14451

Thomas, This really belongs on a different thread, but since you touched on the topic of Alpha -- what do you think will happen to Alpha now that DEC has essentially sold the design to Intel and has sold itself to Compaq ? Do you think Compaq will make a commitment to continue with Alpha development ? Do you think Intel will push the dual strategy of both Alpha and IA64 ? Inquiring minds want to know...

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (4796)	4/29/1998 7:40:00 AM
From: Alexis Cousein	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14451

>I believe that 99 out of a 100 will be with a 600 mhz alpha. Quite an act of faith. Also, the better-performing Alpha systems are not the ones that cost '1/10th of anything comparable from SGI'. But let's not start a thread about that here. Take a thread to comp.sys.*.advocacy and enjoy basking in the flame wars. Surprisingly round numbers, too ;). As I said, you have the right stuff for a marketroid, but I'm surprised a system engineer would utter such round-numbered comments. So, the fact that Alpha systems don't command a 99% market share (not even in the NT space, where the only competition is from IA32 chips, -- hardly the most formidable opponents, and where everyone is burdened by the same OS) is probably due to the fact the world is populated by idiots, I guess. The fact that Linux machines are not 99% Alpha would mean that most Linux users are stupid, too?

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (4796)	4/29/1998 6:27:00 PM
From: Jojo Mosko	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14451

Well Thomas, this is degenerating into an "Alpha advocacy" thread. So allow me only to question your "99 out of 100 will chose a 1-CPU machine the best of which is Alpha" to keep it simple... While I share your love of Linux, and while I know that Linus himself has at least one Alpha box (and has fallen in love with the architecture), I cannot disagree more on your CPU choice. Current 1-CPU systems today are very unbalanced. While CPUs double in speed every 18 months, the rest of the system drags woefully behind. A 600 MHz Alpha is way way overpowered compared to a 33 or 66MHz PCI bus not to mention ISA, I/O devices, and even memory. If you really want to keep it simple, try Linux on a Pentium. The upside is enormous: * Your binaries are much smaller * You can dual boot Win95 and do your taxes * You have much more available software * Your kids can play games on it * You can play Myst or Riven on it * Third pary support and add ons are much cheaper * You pay much less overall But most importantly: since your CPU is overpowered compared to the real bottlenecks of the system (PCI, ISA, ethernet, graphics, sound, modem...) your CPU will be 80% idle even if you're surfing the web while playing a CD while compiling some software (I'm talking about Linux, not Win95 here :-) DEC has great CPU and compiler technology, but chosing their systems just doesn't make much sense. The ingenious thing in a system like the Origin is that it was designed from scratch to solve the real bottlenecks of a modern computer system. Oops, Ducking :-) hope you don't take this too hard, (honestly!) Take it easy. Seeya byeeee !