DEC likely won’t get its successor to the top-end VAX 8000s out until September or October, where he had been looking for it in May or June, Kidder Peabody computer analyst William Easterbrook now reckons. DEC comes back sourly with the comment that the analyst is not in a position2 to know when the new line will be introduced. We have not made any statements about it other than to say that it is likely to be introduced in this calendar year,, the company says, adding that a more widely held belief on the Street is a late-summer or early-autumn introduction target. Easterbrook is not too bearish about the need to change his forecast, saying that the new mid-range VAX 6300 line is more powerful than he anticipated, taking some pressure off the company to upgrade high-end systems quickly. Moreover DEC said at the 6300 launch that the 6300s would likely be overhauled by new models within the next nine months: there has been gossip in the US of a 6400 series, and this, with the 6300s, would wipe out the 8800s, offering better performance at half the price, but those machines could not be the new top-end VAX offering for long: DEC still needs something much more powerful to perform that role.
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