Hey Scott, Actually I thought it was quite appropriate of an analogy, just not what George expected. :-)
To George's assertion that capacity-based pricing doesn't make sense: I DO pay more for gas for my SUV than I do for my smaller car (not per gallon, but definitely per trip) - simply because I use more gas to get from point A to point B. And to an extent, it is based on capacity, not just the fact that I'm going from A to B. I pay more partly for the capacity to take more people in one trip (i.e. the capacity is higher). Do I always use that extra capacity? No, but it is there when I want to use it. The bigger the capacity of the vehicle, the more I paid for it up front, and the more I pay on an on-going basis to keep it running, supported, and maintained. That's different from the computer kneecapping, how? If knee-capped boxes weren't made available for smaller shops like mine, we would have been off the mainframe years ago. And capacity-based pricing is a metric used across the board, not just by IBM on mainframes. Go and price out a windows server and see if you get an 8-way server for the same price as a one-way. Or try to buy a 128 core SUN server for the same price as a 2 core SUN workstation. Or back to your car analogy, why on earth would I pay for a 48 passenger commercial bus to take my family of 4 to church Sunday morning? You buy what you need to get the job done, preferably without paying a bunch of extra money for capacity and features you will never need. Back to sitting on the sidelines watching the debate. :-) Rex -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:ibm-m...@bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Scott Rowe Sent: Monday, March 08, 2010 12:32 PM To: IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu Subject: Re: z9 / z10 instruction speed(s) Wow, what an inappropriate analogy. >>> George Henke <gahe...@gmail.com> 3/8/2010 12:24 PM >>> Agreed. So the next time I fill up at the gas station the price should be based on horsepower. All the SUV's should pay vastlly more for the same gas that I use for my Honda Civic. I always use high-test since high-octane is always better even for small cars, better mileage and cooler running engines. The grade of gas used affects the temperature of the engine. It is one reason, why airplanes use special high octane gas. Capacity based pricing has nothing but "greed" written all over it. How can IBM even keep a straight face when they say "shipping capacity that isn't used 'doesn't make sense'" What doesn't make sense is "capacity-based pricing". Rationalization: Completely logical, just not true. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
