A good chunk of my career was based on SGI's until 2002ish. I started on an iris professional if that helps. I still smile when I think of SGI's c++ compiler -

A good chunk of my career was based on SGI's until 2002ish. I started on an iris professional if that helps. I still smile when I think of SGI's c++ compiler - it had real error messages unlike gcc up until a few years ago. SGi hardware was priced high for two reasons 1) The market (government, industry) would bear the price and 2) small market size. Fix market size and the price can come down - leaving your indigo/indigo2/crimsons' for the govt/oil/entreatment industry. With proper application of brain juice, switching to IDE drives, etc you could have shaved and optimized enough to get an indy or O2 usable for the mass market. Add back the memory intensive things as time goes on. Then add in some small business file/email/etc server (challenge s) and you're ready to take on the business market.