From: Sam
Subject: Re: Symbolics stock
Date:
Message-ID: <692@esl.UUCP>
->·····@mbunix (Ralph Marshall) sez ->
->Summarized advice:
->1) Face squarely in directions of Symbolics shares.
->2) Turn 180 degrees.
->3) Run like hell; don't look back or you turn into a pillar of cons cells.
->
->Symbolics sells GREAT software; they just can't push boxes worth a damn.
->Their equipment is way too expensive for deliverable systems in almost any
->realistic situation, their maintenance costs even for research use is
->exhorbitant, and they don't seem to get the message from what customer
->base they have left.
...(More stuff deleted)...
For this reason I've recommended any project I've been related with
NOT be Symbolics-based for the last four years. Obviously, I'm not
alone.
I also regret that many mistakes killed the D-machines from Xerox,
which were great to work in/on, but were doomed by brain-damaged sales
/ marketing strategists at Xerox.
-- Sam
In article <···@esl.UUCP> ···@esl.UUCP (Sam) writes:
>->·····@mbunix (Ralph Marshall) sez ->
<Both posters bash Symbolics for being expensive and unresponsive.>
I'm no investment expert, but it looks to me like you have Symbolics
confused with LMI. LMI hung on at the edge of bankruptcy for a very
long time, whereas Symbolics seems to gave plenty of cash to see them
through this development cycle and into the next one. All the
indications are that the coming batch of hardware and software is very
solid.
Symbolics is taking exactly the right steps to get out of the "box"
business, by putting their effort into the Ivory chip and their
software development. As someone who uses Symbolics Lisp Machines
regularly (as well as VAXen, SUN workstations, and other machines), I
can tell you that their latest release of software (Genera 7.2) shows
that they are responsive to the demands of the market:
It contains many popular improvements and enhancements.
It was delivered on time.
It marks the return of the "source included" policy, with a very
reasonable price. It actually contains more of the source than
7.1 even without the fee!
I don't have enough money to outfit my VAX or SUN like a Lispm; the
memory, software, and OS source-code licenses are far too expensive.
Moreover, it is obviously going to be a couple of years until the
development tools on these machines catch up to where Lispms are now.
(I am betting on Saber C, but maybe SUN's SPE will surprise us.)
If I did have that much money, I would buy more Symbolics stock. I
think the only way they are going out of business is if they are
bought by Sony, or DEC, or a very big defense contractor.
In almost every large project on which I've worked, there has been
some component which was best implemented on Symbolics machines,
usually for its development environment, but sometimes for the unique
hardware itself. I will continue to recommend them where they are the
best solution, which I expect to be often.
______
HUNTER
I read in a recent article that many of the AI companies including
Symbolics, of course LMI, Xerox, and software oriented companies
were losing money. I can't find the article at the moment but I
recall that Symbolics lost a great deal of money and that TI was
the only Lisp machine producer that was semi-decent financially.
I'll try to find the article and post the statistics, but I guess
this explains the decline in Symbolics Stock. I wonder how the
others are doing !
If anyone saw that article plese post it ! I can't remember the
source but it was either an IEEE magazine, AI-Expert, or perhaps
Digital Review !
Hany K. Eldeib
Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
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