Notes 2) Experience - References All Companies are Excellent IBM and SGI have more experience 3) Resumes SGI High level people but unclear role IBM well known people Compaq not known to me 4) Technical Merit All interesting systems with an unclear sustained performance Some applications will realize IBM's peak performance SGI benchmarks cast doubt on their system and I see their system as "risky" 5) Growth Fine for all vendors 6) Benchmarks Assume average of "results of benchmarks" (which I equivalence to technical merit) and presentation/engineering of benchmarks All vendors equal on last count Intellectually dubious OK as a piece of "engineering" 2) MBE I did not see anything for SGI Compaq provided a clear commitment via a local company IBM had general mumbo jumbo 4/8) Maintenance No clear differentiation between vendors for me So record equally There are I think differences in pricing which could be significant in out-years But maintenance should be roughly same for all vendors if one could compare "apples with apples" 5) Professional Services All looked OK to me but i am not an expert here Give all vendors 10 7) Collaborative Proposal SGI unattractive Compaq vague but could be excellent IBM strong and involvement of Pulleyblank and IBM's strong corporate commitment to deep computing exciting