Those thin clients are just going to be cheap PCs anyway. Sure, maybe you have a vendor that hides that from you, but under the hood that's what they are.
There's a countervailing force of physicalization: pulling instanced servers out of beefy many core VM servers and into cheap low power Atom-like machines. It's unclear which force will dominate at this point. My money's on a mix of both.
Even ignoring the Linux issue, you don't need to buy licenses if you have an existing pool of them. Especially for shops that haven't yet had a reason to move away from XP.
I don't think we disagree on any fundamental level. For most businesses, with most use cases Prepackaged Dell's are going to be a good choice. There are going to be cases where resources or requirements differ from the norm and that's not the case.
If you have a surplus of IT services, buying them from Dell can be uneconomical. Consider a university that has access to cheap student labour and a mandate to create part time work, or a union shop that has employees they have to pay regardless of actual need.
If you have specialized needs vendors like HP, and Dell (though to a lesser extent) may not be flexible enough to meet them. Consider a development house with finicky programmers who get snarky when their hardware isn't just-so.
For the record I'm writing this on a Studio 1558, my personal workstation is hand built, my personal mailserver is a cheap Atom board.
My employer provided workstation is hand built because I'm a snarky developer who can demand it. Granted that is effectively a perk along the lines of a nice chair or cola in the frige.
If I were putting 100 (or even 10, really) desktops out for general use, I wouldn't want to bother with that. I don't really blame our IT minions for grumbling at us.
A $300 beige box would have (slightly) better components, but more importantly they'd be standardized components. Buying an el cheapo Dell without their support is the worst of both worlds. You'll have to deal with any hardware failures yourself, but often won't be able to buy off the shelf replacement parts.
If we're looking at absolute price over any other concerns, I could certainly beat $300 with an Atom based system. For the kind of workload that a $300 Vostro would be appropriate for, that would likely be fine.
On the corporate side they'll really gouge you. As TFA says, they're spending $1,000/machine and you can easily put one together for a few hundred. Corporate buyers are generally more concerned with having a guaranteed, set price, regardless of any possible hardware failures than they are about what that price actually is.
Myself included, even if we had no intention of investing the time required to play an MMO anymore.
Warhammer's real problem was that it learnt all the wrong lessons from WoW, and tossed out the superior RvR design from DAoC. The silly instanced RvR bled off too many people from the in world zones because it was easy to just jump into. Rather than the back and forth of DAoC's RvR where you'd sometimes be outnumbered and have to mount a last stand at an important keep, there was bland, perfectly balanced by numbers twitch RvR.
Of course, even numbers doesn't mean balanced. If your pick up group got matched with an opposing guild group, you had no real chance.
Still, I might play from time to time if they made it f2p.
When comparing two devices and one supports piracy better than the other, always bet on the one that sails the high seas. Where would the iPod be if it didn't support mp3s?
And a hammer can be perfectly suitable for driving in screws, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Yes, you can run windows as a server OS. But after all the extra work maintaining it, you'll just have something that's almost, but not quite, as serviceable as any of dozens of UNIX OSes that are designed for the task. And what will you be running on it? Either software that can be run on windows, but is really intended for UNIX, or Microsoft's half assed me-too clones of that software.
All the software you're going to run on a server is written primarily for other systems. Sure, you can often run it on windows as well, but why swim against the current?
What benefit do you get from the extra work you have to put into it?
Large enough companies can get away with it for general enough positions. Sometimes they're only sort of doing it anyway. Many have a policy that you have to tender and "consider" outside applicants for a position you crafted entirely as a promotion for someone within the company.
I'm not defending the practice, I'm just pointing out that it's not irrational.
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Those thin clients are just going to be cheap PCs anyway. Sure, maybe you have a vendor that hides that from you, but under the hood that's what they are.
There's a countervailing force of physicalization: pulling instanced servers out of beefy many core VM servers and into cheap low power Atom-like machines. It's unclear which force will dominate at this point. My money's on a mix of both.
Even ignoring the Linux issue, you don't need to buy licenses if you have an existing pool of them. Especially for shops that haven't yet had a reason to move away from XP.
Zino doesn't seem to be Atom or at it's price point. You can put together an Atom box for less than $200.
And that dune buggy can go places it can't.
I don't think we disagree on any fundamental level. For most businesses, with most use cases Prepackaged Dell's are going to be a good choice. There are going to be cases where resources or requirements differ from the norm and that's not the case.
If you have a surplus of IT services, buying them from Dell can be uneconomical. Consider a university that has access to cheap student labour and a mandate to create part time work, or a union shop that has employees they have to pay regardless of actual need.
If you have specialized needs vendors like HP, and Dell (though to a lesser extent) may not be flexible enough to meet them. Consider a development house with finicky programmers who get snarky when their hardware isn't just-so.
For the record I'm writing this on a Studio 1558, my personal workstation is hand built, my personal mailserver is a cheap Atom board.
My employer provided workstation is hand built because I'm a snarky developer who can demand it. Granted that is effectively a perk along the lines of a nice chair or cola in the frige.
If I were putting 100 (or even 10, really) desktops out for general use, I wouldn't want to bother with that. I don't really blame our IT minions for grumbling at us.
A $300 beige box would have (slightly) better components, but more importantly they'd be standardized components. Buying an el cheapo Dell without their support is the worst of both worlds. You'll have to deal with any hardware failures yourself, but often won't be able to buy off the shelf replacement parts.
If we're looking at absolute price over any other concerns, I could certainly beat $300 with an Atom based system. For the kind of workload that a $300 Vostro would be appropriate for, that would likely be fine.
On the corporate side they'll really gouge you. As TFA says, they're spending $1,000/machine and you can easily put one together for a few hundred. Corporate buyers are generally more concerned with having a guaranteed, set price, regardless of any possible hardware failures than they are about what that price actually is.
Most keeps were placed for where most people would end up: at the level cap. There was a single keep for each 10 level spread below that.
The lower level keeps were under almost constant siege, and those at the level cap always had a keep available to attack.
Free to level 10 is an evening or two of play. It's more of a more rational demo strategy.
Myself included, even if we had no intention of investing the time required to play an MMO anymore.
Warhammer's real problem was that it learnt all the wrong lessons from WoW, and tossed out the superior RvR design from DAoC. The silly instanced RvR bled off too many people from the in world zones because it was easy to just jump into. Rather than the back and forth of DAoC's RvR where you'd sometimes be outnumbered and have to mount a last stand at an important keep, there was bland, perfectly balanced by numbers twitch RvR.
Of course, even numbers doesn't mean balanced. If your pick up group got matched with an opposing guild group, you had no real chance.
Still, I might play from time to time if they made it f2p.
When comparing two devices and one supports piracy better than the other, always bet on the one that sails the high seas. Where would the iPod be if it didn't support mp3s?
Just FYI.
And a hammer can be perfectly suitable for driving in screws, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Yes, you can run windows as a server OS. But after all the extra work maintaining it, you'll just have something that's almost, but not quite, as serviceable as any of dozens of UNIX OSes that are designed for the task. And what will you be running on it? Either software that can be run on windows, but is really intended for UNIX, or Microsoft's half assed me-too clones of that software.
All the software you're going to run on a server is written primarily for other systems. Sure, you can often run it on windows as well, but why swim against the current?
What benefit do you get from the extra work you have to put into it?
That it's not useful to learn to hammer in screws, even if it is possible.
Windows has a place on the desktop. It doesn't have a place in the server room.
So long as they're useful.
I'm not demeaning Powershell. I'm demeaning shoehorning windows into the server closet.
Automatic transmissions are inefficient and require more maintenance than standard transmissions.
Much like graphical interfaces.
The rest of us will just keep using bash, thanks.
How do you configure it, using the command line only?
Yes, you *can* use it as a server, but it's a huge pain in the ass.
Maybe a few hobbling along on their anaemic server products.
No one takes their smartphone OS seriously.
Really
What the hell were they spending that on?
But if you tell developers they can't make stupid apps, then you'll never get the rare gem you weren't expecting.
Large enough companies can get away with it for general enough positions. Sometimes they're only sort of doing it anyway. Many have a policy that you have to tender and "consider" outside applicants for a position you crafted entirely as a promotion for someone within the company.
I'm not defending the practice, I'm just pointing out that it's not irrational.
Than to need applicants and not have them.