Is the box produced by a reputable firm, and will they back it with service?
You expressed my point perfectly. Sure, businessmen will welcome competitive alternatives - I just don't think there are any yet.
I don't think IT managers sweat about what kind of processors are in their boxes at work. They worry about crashes and downtime and other such things that cost $$$$s when they fail. You can be sure that if a particular power supply or mass-storage component gets a reputation for failing a businessman will think about it, all right - long enough to toss it out the window.
Intel has worked hard - and successfully - to create a reputation or performance, dependability and service. Zero downtime. Of your three criteria, Intel has nailed two - performance and service - to a degree that they can, and do, charge a premium for those products.
Right now, IMO, AMD is hitting one of three - price - and that ain't gonna cut it in the business world.
Yeah, if AMD can match Intel hardware on performance and service, and continue beating them on price, then they'll make money hand over fist. But they're not there yet and I'm not losing sleep at night worrying that they will be anytime soon.
There's a huge jump between a box that sits on a desk and runs Word and Quake, and a work PC that has a NIC and runs both the NetWare and Windows network clients to access file, print, and application servers on a 100,000-node network.
And making a CPU that's dependable enough for a server, well, that's a whole different universe.
Will AMD get there? Remains to be seen. Like I said, another hurdle for AMD to clear.
Regards,
Badger |
