Re: [TCLUG:19672] VALinux vs Compaq

[Ben Kochie <ben@nerp.net>]

spoken like a true geek.. :)  the thing is, his boss isn't concerened
about how nice it is to open the case and upgrade it.. to him, upgrading
shouldn't need to be done anytime within the next 2 years.  and a compaq
field service guy is the one who's probably going to do it.  working in a
datacenter enviornment, where when a server went down, it was a call to
the hardware support line, not whip out the screwdriver time.  it was a
very different experience working like that.  it was even more different
when things like the hardware itself would call the hardware support line,
and a tech called us to find out when they could come out.  yikes!

Thank You,
        Ben Kochie (ben@nerp.net)

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 "Unix is user friendly, Its just picky about its friends."

On Tue, 18 Jul 2000, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom wrote:

> > The CTO wants nothing to do with VALinux, says that
> > financially are unstable and products unproved, as compared to Compaq.  
> 
> the only things compaq has proved to me, are that they will put proprietary hardware in their machines (which costs 3x as much to replace), and that they don't care that much about the maintainability of their cases. I don't know about recent compaq hardware; but stuff I've seen that's a couple of years old is absolutely abominable. nearly impossible to maintain in some cases.
> 
> I had a Proliant 300 server at my old job; where the front bezel was held on by tabs and screws in impossible-to-reach places. it was obviously not meant for end-users to add or remove hard drives/tape drives/etc; since one needed to remove the bezel to get to the drive bays. took me about an hour to take it apart.
> 
> remember, this is the same company that for a long while put the BIOS configurator on a 5MB partition on the HDD; so if/when your disk died or needed to be reformatted, you lost the tool for configuring your BIOS (unless you DL'd the floppy configurator from their website... which might be hard if your only computer was belly-up at the time).
> 
> I was just wrenching on a VA desktop box today; and while the lack of a removable side panel irked me; beyond that it was pretty nice hardware. Tyan dual-proc mobo (with only one proc installed); lots of ventillating fans; plenty of space to work within the case. 
> 
> the rackmount units we have here are even better. (with the exception of the annoying little clips that hold the slot cards in place because screws won't fit).
> 
> Carl Soderstrom
> ------------------------------------------------
> Network Engineer
> Real-Time Enterprises
> (612) 943-8700
> 
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