On Sun, May 10, 1998 at 07:05:51PM -0400, der Mouse wrote:
> - Intel: there are so many cheap knockoffs it can be hard to find a
>    decent machine without gaping holes (including security holes), and
>    said decent machine will be more expensive than the really low end
>    that makes Intel boxen look so attractive.

IMHO, the main problem with intel based pc's is lack of reliability.
My old Sparc 1's (three of them) seem to never crash, but all the pentium
based systems I maintain (7 or 8 machines) crash every now and then.
I'd be interested in Alphas myself, but they're quite exotic over here
and I'm afraid getting spare parts might be slow and expensive.  I guess
my next machine will be yet another intel pc, but with ECC RAM this time.

  -jm