*BSD News Article 42599


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From: iotov@wag.caltech.edu (Mihail Iotov)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc,comp.os.linux.hardware,comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.os2.misc
Subject: Re: IDE bad? was Re: List of recommended hardware components
Date: 10 Feb 1995 07:09:26 GMT
Organization: M/MSC
Lines: 26
Sender: iotov@sgi1 (Mihail Iotov)
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <3hf3f6$fmi@gap.cco.caltech.edu>
References: <3g890k$cbl@ionews.io.org> <mreg.137.00270D6C@panix.com> <D3L3KM.FIJ@bonkers.taronga.com> <D3MwsE.KF0@sci.kun.nl> <D3ooGs.CD4@bonkers.taronga.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sgi1.wag.caltech.edu

In article <D3ooGs.CD4@bonkers.taronga.com>, peter@bonkers.taronga.com (Peter da Silva)
 writes:
|> 
|> They've improved it so it's become better than MFM, but it sure didn't take
|> over the market by being better than MFM. It took over the market by being
|> cheap and providing higher margins for screwdriver houses.
|> 

[and later]

|> had taken over the MFM market. IDE was a disaster that we're still to recover
|> from.

What is so bad about being cheap ? Mass success is most easily assured by being cheap,
even if of lesser quality. On the other hand, large market is necessary condition for
the companies to invest more in research, to improve the existing hardware and sell it
at even lower prices. The same guys that bought IDE drives because they are cheap,
bought lots of CPUs along
and provided the necessary cash to Intel, AMD and others, so they could develop 586 and
other awesome processors at prices no one would've predicted a couple of years ago.



-- 

Mihail