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Own a Piece of An Apple-Based Supercomputer
Graff writes "Now that Apple has come out with the Xserve G5, Virginia Tech has been swapping out parts of their 'System X' supercomputer for the more compact 1U Xserves. MacMall is selling some of those System X component G5 systems with an approximate $200 savings and an extra 512 megs of RAM over a normal G5. You can read more about it at MacCentral."
Only 6 months of use out of these things and VT is tossing them out like yesterday's trash. Gee, thanks for doing this after delaying my order for 6 weeks back when the G5s were originally supposed to be shipping to the rest of us. Apparently you didn't need them that badly after all.
8==8 Bones 8==8
Arggggh! Let me rant a little more. Lend me your ears. Why do people alow for this? Why do people buy stuff that has false advertising? There were times I recieved an advertising in the mail for some computer part at a great price, and I run to the store to find the price in the advertising is after mail in rebates. In this case, it was a router for $49 after a $100 mail in rebate.. But you would have to search the small legal print to find the $100 dollar rebate in the advertising.
Why oh why do companies use mail in rebates? I HATE mail in rebates. I will not buy products that have mail in rebates. What is wrong with advertising the real price in BOLD, not the sale price, and listing the mail in rebates in smaller font under the real price?? Sometimes I think computer stores do things like this just to get people in the doors.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Why couldn't VT hold their horses? ...)
my bet is... they could.
no one likes building any cluster (not to mention a supercomputer) out of desktops, esp. ones configured like desktops (gfx, no ecc,
but apple really wanted the PR of having the computer cluster, and perhaps to list the revenue in 4Q2003.
so i can't blame them - looks like a fair deal.
Although, I agree that a bit of engraving would go some way towards supporting their value. Is there anything at all, beyond that 1 sentence on the website, for a purchaser to establish that they really do have one of the Virginia Tech machines?
'Never buy the first version of anything' - even if it is $200 less than list price, has been well looked after, comes with an extra 512Mb and used to be part of a supercomputer. Rev2 or 3 is always a better purchase.
"This is crazy, you realise we could all go to jail for this?" - my manager, somewhere I used to work.
Maybe some folks buy Apples without the educational discount because they aren't eligible for it and figure taking a couple of hundred dollars in discounts for which they don't qualify would be stealing.
Honesty/Intregrity can mean paying list price sometimes.
Life is short: void the warranty.
They (Apple) did _not_ get any discount for buying multiple machines. /.
They only got the educational discount. Read the original annouchment on
Probably the only actual record the big mac can claim is the shortest time to obsolescence. Not to downplay the achievement though...
Well, it's the fastest supercomputer ever built with off-the-shelf components and the number three fastest machine on the planet -- and that's before the upgrade.
They will probably make quite a decent profit out of this, despite the $200 discount. They must have got pretty decent discount from apple for both bulk buying and promotion. And any self respecting geek will want one of these over a stock G5
As someone else pointed out, these are refurbished by Apple and then sold through MacMall. VT isn't selling them, but traded them back in to Apple for credit towards the Xserves.
Life is short: void the warranty.
Apple's online store is charging $2399 for refurbed dual G5s, and the student store's price for a new dual G5 is $2699, $100 less than the MacMall refurbs from Tech. You can even take $26 more off for getting rid of the internal mode, which the supercomputer refurbs don't have either.
Even if you add the extra 512 megs of RAM from Apple's site (where prices aren't the best), these Va Tech refurbs are only $100 less than what a student would spend on the same box new. Not to mention these 2 GHz duallies are rated as "Buy only if you need it - Approaching the end of a cycle" on the Macrumors buyers' guide page.
So not a deal at all if you're a student (though I have to think students at Va Tech could get the inside track on the boxes -- anyone know?) and not a great price for a refurb if you're Joe Schmoe. And not a box with great longevity, relatively speaking, either, if Macrumors has the lifecycle pegged.
Wait for a processor speed bump unless you're dying to own a little bit of celebrity.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Ok, everyone keeps calling these servers and wondering why they've got firewire and a nice video card. Apple sells XServe's if you want a pure server. Typically, these machines would be used by some media professional (layout, design, audio, movies, animation) for which these things make complete sense. These aren't XServe's, these are PowerMacs and as such should be loaded to the gill.
VT didn't buy XServe's to start because there was no G5 version. Now that there is, they are, which over the long run the cooling and power expenses should more than compensate for any money lost on the computer swap deal. Oh yeah, and they've still got the 3rd fastest supercomputer in the world.
$200 off a 6 month old used computer? You've got to be joking, right? You get that in rebates on most brand new computers these days.
This kind of shit is exactly why I have never bought from MacMall. They have the markup from hell. I'm surprised they can stay in business. The only thing I can figure is that the average Mac user is not computer saavy (i.e. not a Slashdot reader) and has no clue he's being overcharged 50-100%. Some Mac users out there explain to me why you frequent MacMall over the Apple Store or CompUSA?
As an aside, I would love someone to do an in-depth study and research the logic behind mail-in rebates (or, if it's been done, point me to it). I know we all have our ideas, but what is the real reason an online company like Dell or MacMall would sell you a computer and then have you send in a mail-in rebate?
Umm.... the G5's that were being built for normal use had what VT needed. To order specially built G5's would have pushed back delivery while either special ones were built or the supposedly superfluous parts were removed from G5's rolling off the normal assembly line; either option would have also increased costs and reduce eventual value.
Even if the new XServes weren't ready for another year, it's obvious that eventually these computers would be broken up and replaced. If they are full-functioning G5's even if they couldn't be traded in they have an instant computer lab. Your crippled ones would have been useless.
(Of course, I'm also ignoring the details like whether the Airport, USB or Firewire are on the motherboard and idiotic to consider removing.)
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
How many intelligence agencies are there worldwide? How many list their mainframes in the 500 list? What was the last time we knew about the exciting things people like the NSA and GCHQ were doing with computers? World War II. Now take how far ahead of academic computing they were in 1945 and add 50 years worth of Moore's law, Cold War and funky Russian mathematics geniuses.
I bet NSA has stuff that makes this look like a gameboy.
--
Before modding "troll", go look up the meaning of the words discussion, rhetorical and "devil's advocate".
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
There actually IS a way to do math on GPUs, take a look at what these people are doing. I don't know if there is any software yet that will run on Macs and OS X, I think most of it is targeting PCs running Linux, but at least in theory you can do some some pretty high performance math on GPUs.
Of course, there are some downsides to this. First off, it only works on the latest and greatest generation of GPUs that are programable (the Radeon 9600 should qualify here). Second, GPUs only support single-precision floating point math, not the double-precision needed by a lot of complex computing. Third, GPUs are rather powerful vector processors, which are somewhat different than general purpose processors. This is not entirely a bad thing, the Earth Simulator is a giant vector processor as well, but some applications don't work as well on vector processors.
Of course, for real-world code, the difference might not be nearly as large and in many situations the P4 or Opteron could easily be a lot faster.
"real-world code" *is* multiply-adds, when we're talking about scientific computing (and why else would you need a 1,100-node cluster?)
Maybe, but it seems like most people have a pretty flexible view of where the cutoff line is. For example, would you pay sales tax for inter-state purchases where it was not billed as part of the transaction? You are supposed to, but virtually noone does.
Many people would consider paying for a product, but trying to get the best possible price, completely fine. Whether this means rebates, or any possible discount you can get.
After all, it's just a company's arbitrary decision on who gets discounts for what. Why should that company's policy mean anything to people not involved with that company? As if a professor at a university, or an employee of the government (who also get Apple discounts) is more deserving of lower prices than Joe Average.
This is also complicated by the fact that educational discounts are often used as a way to satisfy consumers while keeping corporate prices high. Do a google search for that with respect to Microsoft. They have educational pricing for Office, with no validation, which is aimed at keeping the price for Office sky high for those fat corporations, but still allowing home users to "get a great deal" on it. So, their plan is to encourage you to break their licensing agreement.
When I bought my Powerbook, I instead found a local "gray market" dealer who has access to Apple hardware, but does not stick to their pricing policies. So, he sold it to me for $500 below the MSRP, well below the educational pricing. Where would that be on your moral compass?