IPROF Management Roundtable

Expanding the developer's bundle
to systems bigger than the 918DX

Q. In the 918DX program HP is only offering the Series 918. When can we expect the full range to be available? The 918DX provides no advancement over 917LX in performance, This in underpowered for COBOL compiles on MPE/iX 5.0 and 5.5. Your compile times increased sevenfold compared to 4.0.

Roy Breslawski: Right now, there are no plans to do a developers’ bundle on anything other than the 918DX. If we saw significant demand for that it’s something we could look into, but I, at this point, hesitate to promise that anything will come beyond that.

Jim Sartain: Does anybody know if increasing the memory would make a big difference in terms of performance?

Ken Nutsford: It doesn’t make any difference for COBOL compiles.

Joe Geiser: Actually, in the 5.5 the memory command is increased. The base 918 comes with 64 megabytes of memory which is about as useful as udders on a bull. 128 is the minimum, as far as I’m concerned and as far as a lot of other people are concerned for 5.5 to do any type of serious development compilations, client server development – especially if you're running a client server development shop and you’re running multiple listeners at the same time.

Ken Nutsford: When this scheme was initially announced it was applied across the range, as I understood it. I’m very disappointed that it’s only on the 918 and HP is not making it available on the faster boxes. If it was available with a 968, we’d place an order now.

Roy Breslawski: Would I would like to offer is if people do have a need for a high-end box for a developers bundle, let us know. Frankly, we just haven’t had that many requests for it. If there are a lot of needs for it and we haven’t heard about it, please let us know so we can address it.

Adrian den Hartog: 128 megabytes is available. The standard box is 64 but you can order 128. That means the price does go up a little bit, but we’re virtually giving the box away already for $7,077 as a base system. So applying the additional memory is, I think, a pretty good option.

HP’s Jeff Vance: On the 918DX, our primary goal, beyond everything else, was to make the box cheap. You can still get a 52 percent discount on additional memory through the SPP if you want more than 64 meg. We tried to come in with the cheapest price for a system that we thought you could do MPE development on. That was the goal that the people on 3000-L and the people that we worked with said was more important than anything else. We succeeded, I think, for purchase price with that goal. We have room to improve on rent or lease. And the support issue, I think, is still pretty large. But at least the purchase price part of it has been successful, I think.


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