Musings on hardware prices

[Alvin Oga]

hi ya

On Thu, 18 Aug 2005, Michael T. Halligan wrote:

> Yeah, Dell is pretty miserable.

yup.. cheap but sometimes good .. sometimes bad ..

good for me, if they give up on dell and hireout somebody
to come fix it for them .. after a few unisys folks just 
show up and call home and dont(can't) fix anything

> The way I look at it, the cheap dell servers (sc1425s) are better 
> quality than buying your own components

i rather use my own junk than dell ... 
	( own junk == stuff i buy from distributors ( not webstores ) )

> Well, what I'm saying, is that price of $1200 per month includes my 
> costs for the datacenter & related
> gear (I host a few racks @ a couple of datacenters).

yup.. good pricing ..

> Back in the day, VALinux was great. Reasonable prices, quick 
> turnarounds, and they were really interested in going the extra mile..

just penguin left from that era ...

 I liked to support them because they put so many 
> great projects into the OSS world, alike SystemImager,

ez enuff to make

> and nfsroot boot.

ez enuff to create 

> For the most part, I don't deal with small shops, way too many 
> headaches..

to me... big shops is bigger headaches ..

there's no "one shop has everything", just depends on what the part is
and where you're accustomed to getting it
	- i need my parts within an 1hr of placing my orders
	and i can usually get it at still below retail pricing

	- but fries rebate pricing is next to impossible to match,
	except, you have a 50/50 chance you dont get a rebate

anybody wanting 50 or 100 systems would need to walk in with
a check in hand vs a PO in our world before we jump an inch

today's funky meeting was the standard, new kid on the block,
ie big company wanting to create a biz unit and wants a 1,000
systems per month on net 30 or net 60+ :-) and yet they're nickel
and diming for the first 25 prototypes ...
	- umm .. what's wrong with this picture ??

	( they're collecting part numbers and manufacturers )

c ya
alvin