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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KAD who wrote (27267)	6/7/1998 11:53:00 PM
From: Jack T. Pearson	Respond to of 97611

KAD, I live and work in the Silicon Valley. Everything I hear, before and after Intel's announcement, indicates that they encountered unforseen development problems with Merced. No show-stoppers, just lots of things to do. DEC was unable to gain significant market share in six years of marketing Alpha, even though it was the fastest CPU around. I suspect Compaq wants to position themselves as the NT for Enterprise company. I don't think they will push a particular CPU. They will compete with Sun, IBM, and HP. As a stockholder, I expect them to offer the most bulletproof, cost effective solution. Dell is taking on Sun workstations with PC NT workstations. Their performance is comparable for the market they have targeted; their price, significantly lower. I suspect Compaq will offer PC NT workstations that are competitively priced. I really don't know if they can offer Alpha NT workstations at a similar price and make money. I don't think Compaq bought DEC to get Alpha. I don't think they will aggressively market Alpha unless they can make a higher margin than they can by selling a powerful PC. Unlikely, IMO. There will always be a few applications where an Alpha server or workstation makes sense. These are applications where NT is needed and the fastest possible workstation is necessary. My company uses DEC Alphas for Microsoft Exchange servers. All of our other servers and workstations have been HPs or Silicon Graphics or Sun, which don't run NT. When PC workstations are powerful enough, we will probably move that direction, because they will be less expensive (higher volume), because fewer unique platforms will simplify our support systems, and because PC workstation will facilitate interchange of administrative data with PC users. That move will probably start next year as multi-processor PCs with high speed buses appear to be able to handle many of our applications, even before Merced becomes available. Respectfully, Jack