I still got mine... Original IBM PC -modified with
Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on December 04, 2004 10:43 PM
I still got mine... Original IBM PC -modified with the works... 10 MB external hard drive, RAM card, CPU replacement (turbo card to make it a 286), etc. But, I still got the original parts...
I remember that when the single sided floppy drive died that the Folks that sold it to us would fix it for around $1000. I called up an outfit I saw advertised in PC MAgazine and PCCONNECTION folks sold me one for around $100 and on the phone helped me to replace the drive (it was easy to do and from then on I have built most of the PCs I have used). I even got into building custom servers with advanced SCSI controllers for customers who wanted to buy something (however did not want to pay $5,000 for a computer just because Dell or someone was selling it with the "SERVER" name (made money on the labor and a bit of a markup on parts)! However, I never made money on the Microsoft software because the was competition and that part of the bidding kept me selling it at cost! Same with the Citrix stuff... Always bidding and so never marked up the price on the ICA server stuff! With Citrix, I never made money selling thet product when I was Certified with them (they kept wanting me to go to stupid classes to get additional levels of certification when they had a version change and I refused because it was just a profit center for them AND I was one who suggested some of the features early on the got built into the NT4 product before Microsoft told them they could not do it because MS was going to... so, some of my suggestions ended up in the MS product instead)!
Anyway, back to the IBM getting out of the PC business. I think that area is too crowded with DELL and everyone already... and I think that the virtual machine stuff mixed with the Terminal Server stuff (a-la Tarantella, LTSP, NoMachine) is the future for all business apps anyway... so - there will be fewer PCs with harddrives out there and more Terminal Clients... unless you are doing a graphics application you don't need local CPU with Hard Drive and speed of processing for graphic rendering... in fact the most complex of this is being leased out from cluster centers like HP is leasing out CPU cluster time to Dreamworks and other multi-media companies!
SO - At home, yes folks will have PCs that will be all dolled up to do all kinds of entertainment funtions... at work fewer and fewer PCs will exist (the TCO is cheaper with terminals)!
Goodbye, IBM started the whole thing with the IBM PC and I got that piece of history... and they may be starting companies down the road of the data center, terminal server, provider instead! It just makes dollars and sense!
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I still got mine... Original IBM PC -modified with
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on December 04, 2004 10:43 PMBut, I still got the original parts...
I remember that when the single sided floppy drive died that the Folks that sold it to us would fix it for around $1000. I called up an outfit I saw advertised in PC MAgazine and PCCONNECTION folks sold me one for around $100 and on the phone helped me to replace the drive (it was easy to do and from then on I have built most of the PCs I have used). I even got into building custom servers with advanced SCSI controllers for customers who wanted to buy something (however did not want to pay $5,000 for a computer just because Dell or someone was selling it with the "SERVER" name (made money on the labor and a bit of a markup on parts)! However, I never made money on the Microsoft software because the was competition and that part of the bidding kept me selling it at cost!
Same with the Citrix stuff... Always bidding and so never marked up the price on the ICA server stuff! With Citrix, I never made money selling thet product when I was Certified with them (they kept wanting me to go to stupid classes to get additional levels of certification when they had a version change and I refused because it was just a profit center for them AND I was one who suggested some of the features early on the got built into the NT4 product before Microsoft told them they could not do it because MS was going to... so, some of my suggestions ended up in the MS product instead)!
Anyway, back to the IBM getting out of the PC business. I think that area is too crowded with DELL and everyone already... and I think that the virtual machine stuff mixed with the Terminal Server stuff (a-la Tarantella, LTSP, NoMachine) is the future for all business apps anyway... so - there will be fewer PCs with harddrives out there and more Terminal Clients... unless you are doing a graphics application you don't need local CPU with Hard Drive and speed of processing for graphic rendering... in fact the most complex of this is being leased out from cluster centers like HP is leasing out CPU cluster time to Dreamworks and other multi-media companies!
SO - At home, yes folks will have PCs that will be all dolled up to do all kinds of entertainment funtions... at work fewer and fewer PCs will exist (the TCO is cheaper with terminals)!
Goodbye, IBM started the whole thing with the IBM PC and I got that piece of history... and they may be starting companies down the road of the data center, terminal server, provider instead! It just makes dollars and sense!
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