NeXT to Sell Network-Only "Diskless" Cubes; Adds 40M Hard Disk
 
Microbytes Daily News Service
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
NeXT has reconfigured its computer in a "network user" version
that comes with a 40-megabyte hard disk but without the standard
256-megabyte optical disk drive, the company announced yesterday
at the Educom conference in Ann Arbor, MI. The new network cube
will be priced at $4995 for academic users; everyone else can buy
it at Businessland for $7995. Like the standard NeXT system, the
network models come with 8 megabytes of RAM, display, keyboard,
mouse, system software 1.0, and applications. The NeXT network
server to which the network cube connects comes with 16 megabytes
of memory, optical drive, and 660-megabyte Winchester drive. It
sells for $11,595 to academic buyers; Businessland prices it at
$19,580.
 
The new 40-megabyte hard disk, built by Quantum (which makes
drives for the Mac), is meant to be used for swapping
applications out of RAM. Temporarily storing files on the hard
disk is quicker than going to an optical drive, NeXT says. The
hard disk is not designed for storing files permanently.
 
People who already own a regular NeXT Computer can get the
40-megabyte hard disk for free, a NeXT spokesperson said. The
upgrade kit is supposed to be available next month.
 
"NeXT now has the equivalent of a `diskless' workstation,
allowing it to compete more readily with Sun, Apollo, etc.," said
Bruce Webster, author of The NeXT Book, former BYTE columnist,
and comoderator of the 'next' conference on BIX. According to
Webster, the new configuration "also lets NeXT sell small, or
large, networks into corporations at a more competitive price,
and since the NeXT station has the hard disk for swap space and
/tmp directories, you actually get a performance boost over true
diskless workstations that have to swap over the network."
 
"The network-only model effectively kills the notion of the NeXT
user `carrying the world' on an optical disk," said Ed Jung,
research director of a neural network company and early NeXT
user. "There is no longer any guarantee that every NeXT machine a
person can access will accept an optical disk."
 
"The assumption appears to be that networking will be the
future," Jung said.
 
Contact: NeXT Inc., 3475 Deer Creek Rd., Palo Alto, CA 94304;
(415) 424-0200.
 
                              --- D. Barker
                              --- Stan Miastkowski
 
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