Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 23:27:30 -0600 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: hornback@wireco.net (Andrew C. Hornback), chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Now a little OT but RE: FreeBSD and Linux (More Questions!) Message-ID: <15024.21186.135020.488657@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <200103150455.VAA01766@usr05.primenet.com> References: <15024.15515.195623.598446@guru.mired.org> <200103150455.VAA01766@usr05.primenet.com>
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Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> types: > > Yeah, minicomputers were basically indistinguishable from from > > mainframes at the end user level. While minicomputers could replace > > mainframes, there wasn't a lot of incentive to do so. The end users > > really didn't see a difference, as they had terminals on their desk in > > either case. All that really happened was that you probably had to > > buy new applications and convert all your data for a new platform. > > Back in the "bill you for CPU seconds" days, there was a lot > of incentive to buy your own machine. > > Departmental control was only a tiny fraction of the incentive. > The biggest incentive at the time for minicomputers is budget > level at which you require external approval. That's why DEC called the high-end vaxes minicomputers, even though they pretty clearly weren't (or did I say that already?). > Most universities > and all governement agencies, at least in the U.S., ended up > buying minicomputers. Computer category as also a big deal, > as far as what you were allowed to buy, since it was bean counters > in the computing services centers trying to protect their income > on CPU time billing to departments who made the rules, never > knowing that what they were approving was letting someone out from > under their thumb, until amost everyone had escaped. Oddly enough, the university I was working at had this interesting problem that they kept having to charge less for CPU time. Grant money got allocated for it, but few - if any - grants actually used all of the CPU time they had purchased. So the IT center never used all their budget for CPU time, so they overage was reflected in next years budget, and the rates went down. There, the departments bought their own machines for control, not budgetary, reasons. Being able to run the OS they wanted, not having to fight people in other departments for resources on the machine, etc. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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