Re: [TCLUG:11792] [TCLUG] I'd like some opinions on a business

[Dave Sherohman <esper@usinternet.com>]

Scott said:
>      I've priced out three complete machines (minus
> monitors), but I'll only include the key bits to keep this
> relatively short.

Have you compared your prices against www.buypogo.com?  It's been a few
months since I last checked them out, but ISTR their systems starting around
$500.

Two things on my wishlist for something like this:

1)  Choice of distributions.  Not everyone uses Red Hat, but a lot of people
(vendors or not) seem to think they do.  I'm a Debian fan.  Other people like
Slackware, Mandrake, Corel, etc.  You might even consider a low-end firewall
box with no hard drive and an LRP floppy.

2)  True low-end boxen.  As I seem to keep mentioning on this list, I
converted a junked Pentium 100 system into an MP3 jukebox last month for a
friend who (at least says) she wants one, but doesn't have $500-700 to spend
on it.  I realize that it may not be as profitable, but nobody sells new
systems with less than a Celeron 300 or so (note that I haven't actually
looked, but if you priced a Cel366 at $700, I'm guessing that a Cel300 would
be as far down as the market goes).  However, considering that this P100 can
fulfill its new purpose in life while running at a fairly steady 22% CPU
usage, throwing a Celeron 366 at the task is incredible overkill.  For a long
time, ftp.cdrom.com demonstrated that an FTP server can handle many hundreds
of clients on a 486DX4/100 - modern net servers are more likely to be limited
by network bandwidth than by CPU capacity.  At work, we can run voicemail
services for 2500 schools on a single P200MMX - even with NT's additional
overhead.  There are a lot of applications that don't need current- or last-
generation chips, but that's all that anyone sells.  Although I can easily
believe that it's not a terribly sound business decision, I really want to
see new (or refurbished) systems available with older CPUs for these less-
demanding tasks.

-- 
Geek Code 3.1:  GCS d- s+: a- C++ UL++$ P+>+++ L++>++++ E- W--(++) N+ o+ !K
w---$ O M- !V PS+ PE Y+ PGP t 5++ X+ R++ tv- b++ DI++++ D G e* h+ r++ y+