[Beowulf] Re: GPU boards and cluster servers.

[Greg Lindahl]

On Tue, Sep 09, 2008 at 02:12:02PM -0400, Robert G. Brown wrote:

> If I buy e.g. a Dell
> laptop (as I have for six or seven years now) I pay a single, easily
> budgeted price and if it breaks (as it has six or seven times now over
> the years -- I USE my laptop, run hard and put up wet), a nice man comes
> to my house and fixes it on the spot, sitting at my dining room table.
> Nearly anywhere else I could by a laptop leaves me with depot repair or
> worse.

Well, there's a reason for that, and it's because Dell has always made
fragile laptops. A decade ago there's no way anyone would buy a Dell
laptop without a great repair plan, and so it was bundled.

As for on-site and/or long-term repair contracts for clusters, they're
pretty common.

-- greg