It happened at last, unfortunately…Silicon Graphics Inc, aka SGI, has filed for Chapter 11 bankrupcy protection, according to the WSJ.
And when I say unfortunately, I mean it…I still remember the days when every geek out there would drool over the latest SGI box out there, hopeing and wishing they could afford it, be it for work or for home…nothing was more impressive as a workstation than an SGI computer.
When I bought my first 486/25, back in the day, I bought it from a friend who was as much of a geek as I am…probably more. I met him through the best local BBS of the time (Creaturas de la Noche), and when the time came for me to spend 10,000 pesos in a computer for my then-starting advertising business (which I later dropped to get into computers), I went to him and bought it. When I went to pick it up, I saw a small and pretty computer sitting on the desk of one of the guys that worked for him, and when I looked at the monitor, I didn’t recognize the OS. When I asked, I was told it was an SGI box, and then I was allowed to sit at it and look around. After I drooled all over the kboard, I asked the price, and was told “somewhere around 10 times what you paid for yours”…I was fabberglased…I could buy a car for that money! On the other hand…that SGI box could do things I had never dreamed of.
Unfortunately, with time, I came to realize that the SGI that had created such and incredible workstation came to not be anymore. The creativity, innovation and quality started disappearing from the company, the competition from Apple, Intel, Microsoft, Sun and, later, Linux meant that SGI had to either create and innovate or die…and this morning they filed for Ch.11.
I don’t think the SGI many of us geeks loved and envied for many years will ever come back…the company has lost the talented people that made them who they were, and the fact that now we have computers that can do what those beautiful SGI boxes could do, but for 1/100th of the price, makes me think they won’t ever again have the money to hire the talent to become the monsters of the workstation world as they used to be.
R.I.P. SGI, we’ll miss you.
(found through LinuxToday)
Technorati Tags: SGI, chapter 11, technology
Tags: Thoughts
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