Jim,
Base cost is only one part of the savings. Another point to
consider is just how much power end-users require for interactive
applications. A smart company will develop different models with differing levels of computing power that target their price/performance to a specific market segment in order to capture
it. The PC, however, is all over the place.
PC's are rising in cost because of their ever-expanding capabilities. The bus & peripheral interface design specs for PC's are more sophisticated than before. It costs Grove more so it costs you more. Then there are the myriad storage devices. Maintenance on a PC will certainly be more costly, especially with all the hardware upgrades that follow the latest & greatest improvements in technology. Quality Assurance is an unknown standard for equipment manufactured with cheap parts. The PC suffers from high rates of failure for the same reason it benefits from competition.
Vendors who make their own equipment always have more control over
the fabrication, assembly, & testing of the end-product. How much
care & feeding does Hi-Tech computers with offshore plants put into
their computers? Economies of scale can't assist a PC with a high
failure rate. I opened one up & found out that the power supply
had been replaced with a squirrel-cage & hamster (just kidding).
As a general-purpose machine, PC's are still in an identity crisis.
Is it a workstation, a server, a desktop computer, a smart terminal?
I think it's trying to be all of the above.
Sun will benefit from NC's because they will showcase Java in an
inexpensive alternative to PC's. If it has less power than PC's
then it will be used by companies with users who don't need the
extra computing power, hence the price is justified. User's who
require more than the NC can produce can get a REAL workstation
with an Ultra.
More importantly, however, is the strategic benefit Sun will get
by selling everything from high-end servers, where their only real
competition is from IBM & maybe DEC, to end-user computing equipment
in the corporate market. Sun has not stated that it has any interest
in home computing or the retail software market: it concentrates
on corporate computing exclusively.
Last but not least is service (I'm starting to sound like a Sun sales
rep!). NC's will be warranted & serviced by their vendor. That is
a hidden cost to PC's that MIS managers bitch about all the time.
If a company uses Sun's servers, it makes sense to go for the NC as
well if for no other reason than to consolidate the service contracts.
IMO, service (or the lack of it) is the main reason Microsoft will
never be taken seriously as an enterprise-wide software supplier, and
the main reason NT will fail to capture the workstation market. |
