On Mon, 4 Dec 2006 at 7:01pm, Robert G. Brown wrote
This is really the basic difference between tier 1 and tier 2. You can save short term money with the latter, but have to do things like just plain throw out hardware -- after sweating over it for a long time, nagging your tier 2 vendor, getting angry, losing a lot of productivity and time. For some projects that works -- for others it doesn't.
I think you're painting with too broad a brush there. I find the Tier 2 I buy from to be *far* more helpful and proactive than the dominant Tier 1 here on campus. I can relate a number of stories about them finding spare parts for systems long out of warranty, upgrading components when it's the quicker rather than the cheaper way to fix a problem, replacing shipper damaged systems within days, etc. In short, the sort of personal, helpful service I've never seen from a Tier 1. And it's not like I'm a major customer, either -- they supply some *big* operations.
Sure, there are many less than good Tier 1s out there, so caveat beowulfer. But you can some who, IMHO, outperform the big boys considerably, and not just on price.
-- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
