CompuServe Messages

(cont.) What's funny to me is that I believe that if you took HyperChem, bought a Dell 486, put the whole thing in a black box (dedicating the Dell to *only* run HyperChem) and sold the whole thing for $7,500 there'd be much less questioning of the price tag. Because it runs on a PC, it's supposed to be cheap. The flip side is that to get similar functionality, you'd have to buy a $10K workstation and put another $10K software package on it. Instead, you can add a $3500 addition to your 386/486 PC, and get just about the same thing done. AutoCad managed to dominate the CAD market despite a flurry of low-end PC CAD packages. Basically, AutoCad was/is a better product, and was aimed at the people who *need* it. I don't know how well HyperChem will sell to people who have never used modelers before. I suspect that you and I would agree that first-time users will not be a big market for this product. Personally, I think that its best market will be at companies who have 60 chemists sharing 2 dedicated UNIX workstations for modeling. Chemists there might get tired of waiting to access a machine, and purchase HyperChem. But my assumption is that their prime market is chemists who have tried (or wanted) expensive modeling software running on big boxes and can be convinced that if they move down to HyperChem, they lose little. Rich