Forget all that – at $33.25 or at whatever they finally closed yesterday, Digital Equipment Corp shares could just be the high technology bargain of the decade if – and it’s a very big if, the company has got everything right with the software and architecture of the Alpha AXP machines: there’s an enormous and still very solid VAX base out there, it has simply not been buying enough new kit to keep DEC in the style to which it had become accustomed – but there has been no pressing reason to buy because the existing machines still work well enough, and those that are ready to upgrade have been waiting for others to be the Alpha guinea pigs; DEC has had two great leaps forward that in aggregate propelled the company free of the minicomputer horde and onto a much higher plateau of its own – the first was when the VAX-11/780 was launched in 1977 and the second when – after allowing Data General Corp to eat its lunch for three years, it hit back with the VAX 8600 (actually a soon-replaced stop-gap but it fulfilled its role) in late 1984; if history repeats itself a third time, DEC should be a $20,000m-a-year company by 1995 – and making good profits by virtue of all the cost-cutting measures.
