Firstly, ARM processor based machines seem to have a longer shelf life. They are, generally, more easily upgradeable ™ this is nothing unique. They are also very compatible but you won‘t understand the real significance of that unless you‘ve tried to run Windows on an 80286 or earlier. So what is the result of this future-proofing?
Acorn machines lose value more slowly than any other machines that I have come across. An average machine loses about 20% of its value per year, the machines still have a market and people still want to buy five year old machines. (Who would want a five year old DOS machine?!)
(Or how about the ten year old BBC Bs that Ray Maidstone is refurbishing for charity? We can‘t get enough to fulfil the demand! Ed.)
If you want to buy a new machine every time one is released, every two or three years, you only need to find a few hundred pounds on top of what your previous machine would fetch. If we all did this, it would increase the availability of secondhand machines, reducing their prices slightly, but it would also increase Acorn‘s sales, maybe reducing their prices too.
If you have a PC-owning friend who comes to visit and is impressed by your A5000, why not sell it to them and buy a Risc PC? This way, we expand the user base, i.e. Acorn‘s customer base, and ensure Acorn‘s survival.
Dave Pantling, Bletchley
The cost of the product is the overall monies you have to pay out to keep it capable and up-to-date over a period of time.
Let me illustrate this by looking at two systems, one an Acorn Risc PC and the other an IBM compatible, both for DTP users.
(Keith‘s figures were for a 9Mb/420Mb ACB45 but I have updated his figures in the light of the new machines and, not surprisingly, the comparison is even better for Acorn ™ more capable for less money. Ed.)
The Acorn:
Risc PC700 10Mb/850Mb ™ 17" £1943 Impression Publisher £299 Studio24 £169 Scanner £550 3 year on-site maintenance £116 TOTAL £3077(Actually, you could use a 5Mb/420Mb ACB70 upgraded to 9Mb at £1728 ™ i.e. £214 better still. Ed)
The PC:
486DX4, 8Mb/420Mb £999 17" Monitor £250 PageMaker v5 £495 PhotoShop v3 £385 Scanner £400 3 year on-site maintenance £125 TOTAL £2654So, at first sight, the PC is cheaper by about £423. However, to keep the PC up-to-date you can expect two upgrades to PageMaker at about £150 each and two upgrades to PhotoShop again, £150 each. Windows eats memory so it will need an upgrade, say £300, and the programs are huge, so another hard disc, say £120. So even though the price was £2654, its cost would become £3674 without taking into account the cost of paying for support to run the software.
What about the cost of the Acorn system? Well, we know that upgrades cost much less ™ remember that CC charged only £29 to upgrade to Publisher from Impression2 ™ so (I hope I‘m right) assume two upgrades from CC at, say, £50 each. Pineapple say upgrades for Studio24 will be free! So the software upgrades cost £100. (Even if CC abandon the Acorn market, we move to Ovation Pro at £169 with two upgrades at £50 ™ the cost will only be £269). These programs will run on 8Mb, so no additional memory there, and the programs and files are much smaller, so no additional hard disc. So, after a price of £3077, the cost becomes (at most) £3346.
The PC advantage in price of £423 has become a cost disadvantage of £328. Makes one think!!!
(Using an ACB70, that would have read... price advantage £209 and cost disadvantage £542. Ed.)
Keith Parker, London