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110 points zdw | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.678s | source
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somat ◴[] No.44355587[source]
The tricky thing about justifying an X terminal is that it requires a nice graphics system and probably a nice cpu to drive that graphics system as well, so really the only thing you don't need is storage. basically it is hard to save money because you are buying most of a nice computer anyway.
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1. justin66 ◴[] No.44357307[source]
A cursory look at Byte Magazine from September of 1987: a 233MB Priam hard drive for $2888 dollars. That's with a crappy RLL interface rather than SCSI.

If you think about a lab full of computers doing relatively simple Unix work, and how much money would be saved by just having a single drive (and all other things being equal, which they of course aren't), it's not trivial.

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2. toast0 ◴[] No.44363393[source]
Plenty of Unix systems could be booted from NFS. Assuming no local storage, and that you need X, the question is, what's the difference in cost and capability between a X terminal and a diskless unix station that runs X? You've also got to consider costs to run a NFS server for your diskless unix stations vs costs to run a desktop server that backs all the X sessions.
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3. justin66 ◴[] No.44369094[source]
X terminals predate usable, widespread NFS implementations by a few years, I think. I wonder if the migration away from X terminals might be as simple as that.