[P1] 17" Laptops

[Kim Gammelgaard]

I am sorry about it, Brian, instead of purporting Myths like "Apple is too
expensive period" you should check your facts first.

In his article at Wired:
<http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,61005,00.html>

Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan, the maker of the cluster, is quoted for the
following (on page 2):

> Varadarajan said before the G5 cluster, he'd never touched a Mac. "They
> (Apple) were in a bit of a shock," he said. "They assumed I was some kind of
> Mac fan, but I'd never used a Mac before."
> 
> He now has two: a 17-inch PowerBook and a Power Mac G5 in his office.
> 
> Varadarajan said Apple provided significant technical help and gave Virginia
> Tech some of the first G5s off the production line, but the college paid full
> price for the machines, which cost $3,000 apiece.

I realize that they got the standard educational rebate, but when comparing
to the 10-12 million it costs to make a similar Opteron or Itanium cluster,
including the educational rebates on those systems, it is still peanuts
 
It could be an interesting sociological topic to see why the "Mac is more
expensive" - myth is still proliferating as it is - even among Mac users.
 
The cluster is now at more than 10 TFLOPS and is the first academic
institution in the world to have that kind of computer power.  See
<http://www.netlib.org/benchmark/performance.pdf> page 53 for the standing.

Cheers,

Kim

On 04/11/03 2:55, "Brian Pearce" <bpearce at cloud9.net> answered my rant:

>> Are you totally out of your mind? If Macusers were that, how come the
>> number
>> 3 fastest computer in the world is a cluster of Mac that are bought at
>> less
>> than half the price that the equivalent Windows PC's cost.
> 
> This is a poor choice to argue price point with, as these computers
> most likely weren't bought off-the-shelf at retail prices.