the va tech mac supercomputer is currently in at #3, and may advance further.
and the first thing that really surprised me. a lot of people have been saying the supercomputer is so much cheaper than others because apple gave a steep discount.
nope.
va tech paid retail, $3,000 each, for all 1,100 nodes. theres even a pic on va tech’s site of them placing the order online. 🙂
now on the downside, apple has already discontinued security updates for jaguar. time to upgrade my ibook. and probably the coastal wave billing server, which is still running os x 10.0 (which i’m sure hasn’t had a security update in a year)…
*gulp*
I can’t believe they paid full price…
Thats.. well.. dumb.
uh, no, they got them basically the day they came out…it’s just like buying a new car…you’re going to get the rebates/discounts on a 2004 right now…
(incidently, remember that g5 shortage…guess who bought the supply…)
VA commented on that a wired article…basically it came down to they wanted it *now* and didn’t want to wait…
Keep in mind at 3.3 mil for 1,100 machines, they still undercut Dell(!) and IBM (no surprise there…)
and, yes, no more jaguar support blows as i just bought two ibooks in sept…that’s a pisser…
edit —> … *not* going to get rebates…
That’s bullshit. If you qualify for an educational discount, (or a non profit discount, as in my experience) it doesn’t delay your purchase at all. If you get the discount, take it. They could’ve added a few hundred machines to their cluster, so it was poor shopping on their part. If you don’t have any paperwork setup to qualify you for the discount, just tell your vendor that you’re going to buy 3.3 million worth of computers and they’ll expedite it for you. They’ll probably throw in a few freebies or give you a discount too.
i’m pretty sure 3,000 is with educational discount. the education discount is really not much – less than $50 on my $1100 ibook. Price out a machine at apple’s site and it’s likely going to be more like 3,500.
i think the point is that they did get a discount, probably the same as if they would have built a lab of 30 computers or just one for some professor, but not some huge dramatic underbid on apple’s part.