re sgi sales practices was crimson was kubota announcement my comment regarding dec was to indicate that i might be open to other vendors that supported opengl rather than deal further with sgi opengl is a graphics programming library and as such is a great portable interface for the development of interactive d graphics applications it is not however an indicator of performance as that will vary strongly from machine to machine and vendor to vendor sgi is committed to high performance interactive graphics systems and software tools so opengl means that you can port easily from sgi to other platforms there is no guarantee that your performance would be comparable what i am annoyed about is the fact that we were led to believe that we would be able to upgrade to a multiprocessor version of the crimson without the assistance of a fork lift truck if your sales representative truly mislead you then you should have a valid grievance against us which you should carry up to your local sgi sales management team feel free to contact the local branch manager we understand that repeat sales come from satisfied customers so give it a shot i m also annoyed about being sold several personal irises at a previous site on the understanding that architecture would be around for a while rather than being flushed as one of the previous posts stated the personal iris was introduced in and grew to include the d d d and d as clock rates sped up over time as a rule of thumb sgi platforms live for about years this was true of the motorola based series the pi the professional series the early d s the power series parallel systems individual cpu subsystems running at a particular clock rate usually live for about years new graphics architectures at the high end gt vgx realityengine are released every months to years these are the facts of life if we look at these machines they become almost archaic after four years and we have to come out with a new platform like indigo onyx challenge which has higher bus bandwidths faster cpus faster graphics and i o and larger disk capacities if we don t we become uncompetitive from the user perspective you have to buy a machine that meets your current needs and makes economic sense today you can t wait to buy but if you need a guaranteed upgrade path for the machine ask the sales rep for one in writing if it s feasible they should be able to do that some of our upgrade paths have specific programs associated with them such as the performance protection program for older r based power series multiprocessing systems which allowed purchasers of those systems to obtain a guaranteed upgrade price for moving to the new onyx or challenge r based bit multiprocessor systems now i understand that sgi is responsible to its investors and has to keep showing a positive quarterly bottom line odd that i found myself pressured on at least two occasions to get the business on the books just before the end of the quarter but i m just a little tired of getting boned in the process if that s happening it s becausing of misunderstandings or mis communication not because sgi is directly attempting to annoy our customer base maybe it s because my lab buys sgis in onesies and twosies so we aren t entitled to a peek under the covers as the big kids nasa for instance are this lab and i suspect that a lot of other labs and organizations doesn t have a load of money to spend on computers every year so we can t be out buying new systems on a regular basis most sgi customers are onesy twosey types but regardless we rarely give a great deal of notice when we are about to introduce a new system because again like a previous post stated if we pre announced and the schedule slipped we would mess up our potential customers schedules when they were counting on the availability of the new systems on a particular date and would also look awfully bad to both our investors and the financial analysts who watch us most carefully to see if we are meeting our commitments the boxes that we buy now will have to last us pretty much through the entire grant period of five years and in some case beyond that means that i need to buy the best piece of equipment that i can when i have the money not some product that was built to paraphrase one previous poster s words to fill a niche to compete with some other vendor i m going to be looking at this box for the next five years and every time i look at it i m going to think about sgi and how i could have better spent my money actually your money since we re supported almost entirely by federal tax dollars five years is an awfully long time in computer years new processor technologies are arriving every years making a year old computer at least and probably generations behind the times the competitive nature of the market is demanding that rate of development so if your timing is really years between purchases you have to accept the limited viability of whatever architecture you buy into from any vendor there are some realities about the computer biz that we all have to live with but keeping customers happy is the most important so don t give up we know it josh joshua mogal product manager advanced graphics division advanced graphics systems silicon graphics inc market manager north shoreline blvd virtual reality mountain view ca interactive entertainment m s l tel fax e mail mogal sgi com
