In those days, I was using SGI machines to build web sites for folks .. the Indy was very popular for this purpose. One day I was given a DEC Alpha machine to evaluate and see if it was a worthwhile addition to our inventory.
It came with NT, so there was some friction to just adding it to our services. These days were very frustrating - Microsoft was hell-bent on killing Unix, and later Linux also - and there was a lot of back and forth in our engineering team whether we wanted to invest in this hassle.
We didn't. I had that machine under my desk doing basically nothing for a year, before I sent it back.
If there had been a bit more insight into the nature of things, and if it had been running a Unix variant, we would have given it a better chance.
So then it was even more frustrating when SGI did a deal with the devil in later years, and tried to get its customers switch to NT, also. That killed SGI, in my opinion.
Looking back now, it's kind of incredible the resistance to Unix in those days, and how it was all going to be replaced with some "New Technology". Linux won. SGI didn't. And DEC was an early victim they should have learned from, in my opinion.
It came with NT, so there was some friction to just adding it to our services. These days were very frustrating - Microsoft was hell-bent on killing Unix, and later Linux also - and there was a lot of back and forth in our engineering team whether we wanted to invest in this hassle.
We didn't. I had that machine under my desk doing basically nothing for a year, before I sent it back.
If there had been a bit more insight into the nature of things, and if it had been running a Unix variant, we would have given it a better chance.
So then it was even more frustrating when SGI did a deal with the devil in later years, and tried to get its customers switch to NT, also. That killed SGI, in my opinion.
Looking back now, it's kind of incredible the resistance to Unix in those days, and how it was all going to be replaced with some "New Technology". Linux won. SGI didn't. And DEC was an early victim they should have learned from, in my opinion.