DaemonForums  

Go Back   DaemonForums > FreeBSD > FreeBSD General

FreeBSD General Other questions regarding FreeBSD which do not fit in any of the categories below.

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 21st May 2008
roddierod's Avatar
roddierod roddierod is offline
Real Name: Rod Person
VPN Cryptographer
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Pittsburgh, Pa
Posts: 437
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by scottro View Post
Sigh, of course, this Sunday, I have to go with my wife to look at Apple computers--I wouldn't trust her on a PC and I don't have the energy to support BSD or Linux for her.
I got mine a Mac Mini(before the intel versions) for the same reasons.
__________________
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words." -Philip K. Dick
Reply With Quote
Old 21st May 2008
siffland siffland is offline
New User
 
Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 5
Default

Support is a big issue. The company I work for has contracts with the government. If we wanted a FreeBSD workstation there is no way they would just let me build one, we would have to purchase one from a company that offers a support contract with the machine (same reason we have Dell workstations (Windows) and HP servers (HP-UX and RHEL)). So for bigger companies who are required to have support contract on all their machines they purchase this would (I cannot believe I am saying this) an acceptable price for a desktop. And i am sure if a company is going to buy 100 of these they probably get a sweet discount. If my company would let me have a FreeBSD desktop at work i would never leave them.

Sean
Reply With Quote
Old 21st May 2008
scottro's Avatar
scottro scottro is offline
Real Name: Scott Robbins
ISO Quartermaster
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: NYC
Posts: 652
Default

Well, I was curious enough to drop them a line, linking to this thread. Perhaps they'll give us an explanation.

Sigh, I do need to get a life one day.
Reply With Quote
Old 21st May 2008
scottro's Avatar
scottro scottro is offline
Real Name: Scott Robbins
ISO Quartermaster
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: NYC
Posts: 652
Default

As many of us thought, there is a logical explanation. I'm giving Mr. Oleander's reply. (Received within, I would say, less than a half hour after sending the inquiry.)

(This posting of his reply is with his permission.)

Quote:
Hi Scott!

Thanks for your comments. We recently upgraded the website and, in fact,
this is really just a place-holder for a higher-end system. If you haven't
noticed yet, you can not actually purchase this system from the site and
the details are rather skimpy. This is because we've recently qualified a
BSD Worksation platform as a viable option and hadn't finalized all of the
hardware selection at the time of the site rollout. The picture that is
posted is not actually the chassis for the final product, which is much
more robust that what is shown.

However, that being said, yes, I am sure any self-sufficent DIY sysadmin
can certainly build their own system for less. Our customers that have
pushed for a BSD Workstation offering tend to be larger than a do it
yourself-er and require purchases of this nature to be from a company that
they can rely on for support after the sale. The final price of the actual
released workstation will probably be higher. This is because most of them
will be dual boot, RAID'd systems with the option for SAS drives, large
amounts of memory, etc.

Once the final product is ready for sale, we will do a formal press release
and I will probably post on one of the FreeBSD mailing lists. Also, we've
just finished writing the NIC driver for our new laptop and are in the
process of final tweaking and testing. Once again though, this probably
won't be a consumer product offering but more of a rugged corporate product
for multiple unit sales.

Sorry for the confusion and yes, please, go ahead and post this response in
your forum reply *waves*!
Reply With Quote
Old 21st May 2008
TerryP's Avatar
TerryP TerryP is offline
Arp Constable
 
Join Date: May 2008
Location: USofA
Posts: 1,547
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by scottro View Post
I wonder if it's been discussed and perhaps even answered on the PCBSD forums? ...
Not that I can recall reading anyway.


I would rather hope that it's not just an (annoying) OEM/ODM thing going on that drives up the price tag.


I could understand high price tags _if_ it costs them more to get a working system going, but hell you can shop off the 'net and build one. And of course it's not really a large market either compared to the ease of finding Wintel's.


Matt Olander is a decent guy, although I'm not fond of iXsystems. I would still trust him to be reasonably honest about most things, so it wouldn't hurt to ask him.



At least, Matt hasn't banned me yet for calling him "Molar Man" or "Molar-ander" on IRC yet



I personally would consider buying a server from iXsystems if I had fundulation for a proper server machine in the first place. But I have a sort of 'build it yourself' nature hehe when it comes to regular PCs, for which I'm knowledgeable enough to shop for compatible parts and avoid most paper weights I see.


PS:

DrJ, did you have to make me drool over that 'workstation' ?
__________________
My Journal

Thou shalt check the array bounds of all strings (indeed, all arrays), for surely where thou typest ``foo'' someone someday shall type ``supercalifragilisticexpialidocious''.
Reply With Quote
Old 21st May 2008
DrJ DrJ is offline
ISO Quartermaster
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Gold Country, CA
Posts: 507
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by TerryP View Post
DrJ, did you have to make me drool over that 'workstation' ?
Yes, absolutely.
Reply With Quote
Old 22nd May 2008
FloridaBSD FloridaBSD is offline
Fdisk Soldier
 
Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 58
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by kace View Post
This is some pretty cool news!:

iXsystems: BSD Workstation

And, the laptop is on the way.

(p.s., Maybe there should be a "News" forum. I couldn't find a better place than here to put this.)

For substantially less than the price on these units is outrageous, I could purchase a lo end Dell PwerEdge Sc 420 server with 8gb of memory for about the same price the would out perform a fully loaded version of this machine, let a lone a dell vostro for around 500 and bothe the Vostro and Power Edge i just mentioned are IMHO far more versatile machines.
__________________
Google Linux is a Green Horns Best Friend (GHBF).
Windows = a 32 bit extensions to a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a four bit processor written by 2-bit monopolistic software company founded by a .3-bit Harvard Drop out, who can't stand one respectable bit of competition.
If I believe something to be immoral a will not keep quite and let my voice of annoyance be heard loud and clear.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Welcome to the news section Carpetsmoker News 0 8th October 2009 04:17 PM
NNTP News Server recommendation? DraconianTimes General software and network 0 11th February 2009 03:56 PM
Dual-head OpenBSD workstation? DraconianTimes OpenBSD General 6 7th October 2008 04:22 PM
News section 18Googol2 Feedback and Suggestions 2 2nd May 2008 10:39 PM


All times are GMT. The time now is 04:38 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Content copyright © 2007-2010, the authors
Daemon image copyright ©1988, Marshall Kirk McKusick