Strangely, I worked at a place that did batch data processing on IRIX in the mid to late 90s. While we didn't even use the graphics capability of the machines,

Strangely, I worked at a place that did batch data processing on IRIX in the mid to late 90s. While we didn't even use the graphics capability of the machines, I did notice, at least in 95, that they were a hell of a lot faster than PCs (although the DEC Alpha that I used at a previous job sure gave them a run for the money). I don't know what the price difference was between the servers, but in 99 we got new servers from IBM. We learned from personal experience that the way to pronounce IBM flavored unix is "aches" (AIX). I missed IRIX after that change over, regardless of the hardware price-performance ratio. I also missed having a workstation that ran the same architecture as the prod server. Sharing a dev server sucks, as there's always some jerk who will fill up the disk.