Re: Minutes from Feb 21 LSE Call

From: Jeff Garzik (jgarzik@pobox.com)
Date: Sat Feb 22 2003 - 18:57:56 EST


On Sat, Feb 22, 2003 at 03:15:52PM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> or rackmount cases. I fail to see how there are better margins on the
> same hardware in a rackmount box for $800 when the desktop costs $750.
> Those rack mount power supplies and cases are not as cheap as the desktop
> ones, so I see no difference in the margins.

Oh, it's definitely different hardware. Maybe the 16550-related portion
of the ASIC is the same :) but just do an lspci to see huge differences in
motherboard chipsets, on-board parts, more complicated BIOS, remote
management bells and whistles, etc. Even the low-end rackmounts.

But the better margins come simply from the mentality, IMO. Desktops
just aren't "as important" to a business compared to servers, so IT
shops are willing to spend more money to not only get better hardware,
but also the support services that accompany it. Selling servers
to enterprise data centers means bigger, more concentrated cash pool.

        Jeff

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Feb 23 2003 - 22:00:37 EST