Musings on hardware prices

Fri Aug 19 06:02:47 PDT 2005

>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
>  
>
Cheap is always bad.. I guess in the end with Dell

>>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 ) )
>  
>

One of the disadvantages of small distributors like Acma/Malabs, is they 
really
don't bargain well at quantity.. And the disadvantage iin general is 
financing is
quite a bit harder. The Only two appeals Dell has given me is I know I 
can call them
up for the right project, tell them to extend my credit line another 
$50k for a new
order, and they will with no questions asked.. which is good and bad.

>just penguin left from that era ...
>
>  
>
They're still around? 

> I liked to support them because they put so many 
>  
>
>>great projects into the OSS world, alike SystemImager,
>>    
>>
>
>ez enuff to make
>
>  
>
Who would want to? There are better solutions now. For it's time, SI was 
good.  And given
all of your "easy enough to make" comments, I wonder how much free time 
you might have?
The whole building/writing everything in-house idea is nice in theory.. 
Actually, no it's not. Who
has the time for that kind of crap? 100 hours of development time versus 
$10k and instant
gratification, give me the instant gratification.

>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
>  
>
Fry's is for hobbyiests and bad hacks. Brent Chapman likes to say that 
if he's buying it
from BlackBox, there is something wrong in the design.  I'll extend that 
to saying if
I'm buying it from Fry's, I might as well shoot myself in the head and 
quit this industry.

Rebate pricing is a joke. Sure you can get good pricing on a hard drive 
here or there.. so what? I walk
into fry's and ask for 50 servers, I'm going to get some out of work 
dotcommer who thought they'd
make it big in the tech industry by getting their MCSE, gawking at me.  
If I asked them to finance, they'd
stumble through a neanderthalic sales-pitch of "Uhhh, we have a credit 
card now".

I'm getting these funny images of a 250-server project that we're trying 
to sell for Q1 2006, with me sending
in 250 people to get their "one part" rebate special from fry's, and 
writing a massive distributed system to
calculate the "cost savings" of filling out the rebates, hiring the 
parts buyers, and keeping track of the
rebate status.

>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 )
>  
>

Yeah. If you have a 1K server order, you have no need to nickel and 
dime, all you have to do is set your price
and walk away if the vendor flinches.

-- 
Michael T. Halligan
Chief Technology Officer
-------------------
BitPusher, LLC
http://www.bitpusher.com/
1.888.9PUSHER
415.724.7998 (Mobile)
415.520.0876 (Fax)