Re: New Ada Educational Prices

[aunro!alberta!ubc-cs!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm]

pattis@cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis) writes:
>These prices include the toolset (debugger, etc.)
>
>The 386 DOS version is 239.99/The 386 UNIX version is 314.99

We've lost the reference to whose product, but nevertheless...these things
need to be put in perspective, since I suspect $240 and $315 seem pretty
cheap to the folks here.  $240 is...what...6x the price of all of DOS?
It's getting a lot closer, although it's still too high by at least a
factor of two--that is, assuming you're trying to draw people to Ada rather
than assuming they're already drawn to it.  (The issue is whether the price
can afford to be a slight barrier _vs_ needing to be a slight draw.)

In a similar vein, the UNIX price is 40% of the price of a basic 386 UNIX
OS.  That's a lot, because you get a lot of software with UNIX.

Or you can think of it in terms of hardware cost--typical 386 systems which
might use this stuff are going to be $1500-2000 complete at the low end,
and in this world two or three hundred bucks is a lot.  It's a lesson which
the 386 UNIX world failed to grasp for quite a few years, and still hasn't
quite tuned in: expensive software will never make more than a tiny niche
market.
-- 
Dick Dunn    rcd@raven.eklektix.com   -or-   raven!rcd
	...Simpler is better.