FTA:

Why these machines?

Why not just settle for lower-end, older, more readily available machines? This is a valid question, with answers that are probably not satisfactory to everyone. Of course, there’s the simple monkey brain “bigger number better” feeling, where I want the fastest, “newest” hardware to get the best experience out of these commercial UNIX machines. Another important point is that these machines will all be able to run the latest workstation versions of their various UNIX flavours, which also helps in realising the best possible experience and potentially makes compiling modern software easier.

Since they’re newer, they also tend to be easier to work with in a more practical sense; you won’t need special monitors or keyboards or whatever, since they’re all compatible with standard PC monitors, keyboards, and mice. Having just one dedicated desk with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse that work on both my c8000 and Ultra 45 saves a ton of space and time, since I just need to move a few cables from one machine to the other if I want to change machines.

There’s also a more intangible reason, one that I value a great deal. All of these machines were developed and introduced well past the point where everybody knew full well the dedicated UNIX workstation market was basically dead. The x86 platform was improving at an incredible pace, and offered better performance at far lower prices than any of the architectures in this article ever could. Meanwhile, the kind of software these workstations were designed for had long been ported to Windows, negating the need for commercial UNIX on workstations even more.