What I remember about the rainbow at the time (I didn't have one) was
having to buy a formatted floppy as the OS as delivered wouldn't format a
raw floppy. I remember that being a very silly decision which third party
folks exploited by offering a formatting utility.
=========================================================
George L. Rachor Jr. george_at_racsys.rt.rain.com
Beaverton, Oregon
http://racsys.rt.rain.com
United States of America Amateur Radio : KD7DCX
On Sun, 9 Apr 2000, allisonp wrote:
> >Since that seems to be the almost the only aspect that matters these
> >days, then maybe that one of the reasons why DEC did not succeed.
>
>
> Their lack of direct marketing via radio and TV was a handicap. However,
> KO felt the product being marketed was a technical one for professionals
> and not directed at hobbiests.
>
> >As you, and many others have stated, DEC had a better mouse
> >trap. It almost always worked. The cheese was delicious and
> >rarely ran out. But the other reason for the failure of DEC was that
> >the DEC mouse trap was so much more expensive to buy that few
> >households could afford to buy one. Never mind that in the long
>
> Mostly prose but not completely true. The cost for a Robin, Rainbow
> or PRO was consistant with the time for a competeing system with
> similar hardware, software and quality. Of course that was the early 80s.
>
> Reality was much more complex than the story of mice and traps.
>
> DEC suffered from a complex product, limited marketing and a vision
> that was right for the industry as it was (60s, 70s and early 80s) and
> not was it is (for 1987 on). As a result DEC was holding facilities
> like PNO, WFO and others complete with trained personell and
> nothing for them to do quite literally. At the same time engineering
> and marketing groups were sending things overseas for cost reasons.
> It didn't take a brain surgeon to see that overhead was way out of line
> as there were no layoffs until Palmer appeared. Also over the years
> there were what I called "stupid product decisions".
>
> My favorite is the LA75, $700 printer that TEC sold for $350 at local
> stores. Sure DEC improved it, but it was costly. Other were monsters
> like the VAX9000, fast, powerful and expensive. It was quickly replaced
> by the cheaper 6000 series. Older projects like the PRO, sold maybe
> 40,000 units against a plan that was only scaled for 30,000! If that
> sounds bad it was declared a failure. Exceeded plan and failed! An
> example of short sightedness as to the size of the market. Other
> examples are infamous. I got the dubious honor of participating in
> just a few.
>
> DEC was a engineering, a technology and service company. They did
> not do a good job at marketing. It was mismanagemant of costs would
> end a good run.
>
> I used to remind people and they thought me nuts. If you want to annoy
> the customer ship junk. If you really want to become unforgetable in the
> customers eyes, go out of business. The former they can forgive if you
> fix it, the latter is unforgiveable as your product is part of their
> business.
>
> DEC came close to unforgiveable, save for Compaq being there.
>
> Allison
>
>
>
Received on Sun Apr 09 2000 - 12:45:46 BST