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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Techie who wrote (46586)	6/7/1998 11:05:00 PM
From: Meathead	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176388

Techie, not sure what you mean about pricing but the software itself is exorbitantly expensive. The cheapest software tool I use is APSIM RLGC and it costs $5,000 per license. It's not much more than a glorified transmission line RLC calculator. The average cost per license of the tools we use to design PC's is about $40,000. We have over a hundred licences of these various tools so we don't even blink at the hardware costs of 5-10k per box for Wintel workstations. It's about time too, the Sun boxes were way too expensive by comparison. Pro/E in it's various forms is one type of tool we use where I work. We had been running on Sun Ultra's (about 25k apiece) until they successfully ported to NT. The minimum hardware requirements are somewhat of a joke. Yes, you can theoretically run this software with 64-96MB of ram and a 133Mhz pentium. The reality however requires about 256MB of ram and a 300Mhz PentiumII at a minimum. This will get you barely acceptable performance. But it really goes beyond these basic CPU speed/RAM size metrics we are all used to. Fast/Wide SCSI capability is also desired. A dual 450Mhz P2 with >256MB ram with the right very high dollar video solution is preferred.... but still too slow for mechanical engineers. Really acceptable performance on an NT 5.0 platform should come next year with Willamette, RAMBUS and AGP4X or AGP pro. My work is concentrated in electrical simulation but I work closely with the mechanical guys who gripe and complain constantly about current hardware capabilities. I have the same problem with my suite of software tools... too slow on current state-of-the-art hardware. Anyway, the workstation market is going to be huge for Dell, Intel and anybody else (CPQ, HWP, IBM etc.) selling into this demand. Watch as the overall percentage of desktop revenue continues to shrink for Dell. I bet it goes to 50% within 24 months. MEATHEAD