Subject: Re: DEC's Alpha
From: [email-masked]
To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 94 19:49:35 PDT

Well Since I work for DIGITAL I thinks it's about time I put in my
2 cents worth.

I have to amit the recent comparision was pretty unfair - for a start you
would have a hard time trying to buy new the 150 Mhz Alpha PC any more,
its been replaced by a later model (Alpha 2000 model 300).

1) Video Adapter - It's not ISA - it's EISA. Colours - I dont know off hand
   but from the machines I've used in the field they are anything but slow
as molasses where the video is concered. And no-one is forcing you to
buy the Qvision video card, I sure DEC won't mind if you say you want a
more expensive video card :-)

2) You don't mention which benchmark program your using but reading my
manual here it lists the 2000 model 300 (which did I point out is our
smallest alpha) runs at 110+ SPECfp92 performance. Since I'm a lightwave
renderer as well I be interested in seeing how fast the new RAPTOR runs
at. (I'm not starting a flame - just try to get facts straight).

3/4) Dedication to market. There a book in our library here which rivals
the yellow pages in it's thickness. In there is a list of all the software
which has been ported and runs fine on alpha's. As Also mentioned it's
available also electronicaly from decwrl.dec.com.

Layoff's are a fact of life at the moment and I'm thankfull that DEC only 
had to retrench 4000 people world wide and that it has'nt been so hard on
us like it has been for other large multinational companies like IBM.

I work in a small office in Brisbane, Australia with approx. 6 software
support people. of these 6, 4 Support NT with 2 of them specialists. At this
point in time UNIX IS more popular than NT - (have has a nicer looking
interface at that) that's probably why they had UNIX (OSF/1) software
installed on those machines.

Again - I not saying Alpha's better because I work for DEC - I just trying
to set the fact's straight so we can find out which machine is better
for the money.  I'm thinking of purchasing Screamernet software myself
so I would like to know whether I get more Bang for my bucks using
alpha,raptor, Pentium etc etc etc

Shaun.

[email-masked]