IBM's Bladecenter leaves much to be desired

Why am I writing you? Well, I have some really interesting news about IBM's Bladecenter and I can think of no one more deserving to break the story than you guys. Why do I want to do this? Let's just say I would stand to gain a huge deal of personal satisfaction if IBM (and their Bladecenter specifically) were to be exposed for not being the true enterprise class system that they tout it to be. To be clear, I'm not spreading FUD here - I have actual IBM documentation to back it up. Here's the deal:

For a brief history on IBM's Bladecenter Power, - they have been through at least three generations of Power Supplies - 1200w, 1800w, and 2000w (can be cross-checked here:http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/education/cust/xseries/xref.html). They have been at 2000w for quite some time and rumor has it that this is the last one until Bladecenter2 ships. Everytime Intel woudl rev the CPU ticks, IBM would crank out a new power supply (and once even required new Power Receptacles). IBM calls this investment protection - I call it a waste of my money. This really sucks when you've invested lots in power whips out to your production floor and now you find you need more power than you were told.

But none of that is the really amazing part and I CAN'T beleive this hasn't made the trade rags. If you were to go buy a brand new Bladecenter today with (4) 2000w power supplies and load it up with 14 3.6GHz HS20 blades, one would expect that you could turn them all on, right? NOT SO.

IBM has underpowered the Bladecenter and if you choose to run with redundant power (who wouldn't?), the last 2 blades will not be able to power up - the 13th and 14th baldes will generate a message that says "Blade is not allowed to power on because of insufficient power". Apparently IBM knew this so they built in something called "throttling". This cool feature clocks down all 12 running blades to 60% of their normal frequency and uses the reamining power to get those last 2 turned on. If I did my math right, that means my 3.6GHz blades are now barely breaking the 2GHz mark - and those last 2 - they get to run at 2GHz as well!

Anyway, I promised IBM documentation, so here is where they show this to be true. [Oh dear, page not found. But there's a cached version here, Ed.]

Read it over for yourself. If you think this is newsworthy, I look forward to your article. If not, maybe we'll cross paths again down the road...

Thanks for your time.

Name and address supplied

Dell puts logo pressure on Microsoft, Intel

The issue of stickers on notebooks has always been a sore one for me. I can understand Dell's frustration--or the frustration of any other notebook manufacturer.

In my opinion, it goes beyond manufacturing costs and bottlenecks. Manufacturers spend (or pay someone else) large amounts of money to research and design a package that is functional and aesthetically pleasing.

It's a piece of artwork. Then along comes the Big Bad Wolf, and they have to plaster "Designed for Windows xxx" and "Intel Inside" advertisements on their work. It's certainly not something Dell, or Lenovo, or Gateway, or HP/Compaq want to do--for the aforementioned manufacturing and aesthetic reasons. How do you know the manufacturers don't like the stickers?

Look on their websites. You won't see a single sticker in *any* of the pictures of their notebooks and desktops.

Name supplied, email address too.

Linux Trademarks

Mike

This piece was a very good and timely article although in some ways untimely because for those willing to make an issue of it, the Linux trademark has been lost already, precicely for the reasons the article cites.

We abandoned the use of the Linux name as part of MD-Linux more than two years ago when we could not get a clear answer to the licensing issues and believed then that the mark would have no value except for its use as a trend identifier. It certainly has done that and will continue doing that but what happens when Microsoft starts telling everyone it is joining the Linux parade and we in the Linux camp are helpless in keeping them from using the Linux name?

That's from a company who, so far, has slyly defended its exclusive rights to the windows name, something that by all rights it has no rights to. A long time ago, Microsoft paid off Novell to let it "win" the first windows battle. Recenly Microsoft used the very same tactic to once again "win" against Lindows. In both cases the court records were sealed so that we will never know the Microsoft did not win on the basis of more merits, just on the basis of more lucre. That simple is justice denied.

Will the media dig at this issue and force the record into the open? It all comes back to "the people" taking facism for granted, our own government that is designed to protect us from these kind of shenenigans being in bed with companies like Microsoft, and facism will continue to bite us in the arse.

BTW, a shame that you did not come out with this article since both my friend D, owner of P in Leighton Buzzard in the UK and myself make our principle living putting peoples arses on chairs. Buy some chairs from him when you can!

Name supplied

AMD had spy inside Intel Developer Forum

I used to work at dell. Compaq had and account. Ibm had an account. Gate way had an account. They all purchased each others computers. And if one company spoke at Comdex or anywhere else you better believe that the others would be there to here what was said.

Of course AMD was at IDF... OF COURSE.

If they were not there, then you should have been writing about it.

Name supplied

Do you have something against AMD?

A long time fan from accross the pond.

Drew

[No, Ed.]

Intel's junk

Hi,

We've known about Intel's junk dual-core architectures for a good while of course :-)

Business users have wound up in a terrible situation where we are dealing with sub-standard hardware and software and we have only ourselves to blame.

There are enough large Microsoft customers to form an alliance that (i) demands that Microsoft stops 'innovating' until it has made existing systems robust and (ii) produces a task force development team that writes good device drivers plus open standards-based application software for Linux as security against Microsoft continuing to produce low grade software and as an alternative solution to Microsoft products.

Secondly, since most news providers are, for whatever reason, ineffective, a business alliance should be formed that rates hardware and makes recommendations to manufacturers. Simple things like ditching Molex connectors and making network cable connectors much less easy to break would be a start.

Yes, we buy junk and yes we are idiots for doing so but together we have a phenomenal amount of leverage that is just waiting to be harnessed!

Warmest regards,
Jeff Lawson

The upgrade cycle

Regarding the Upgrade Cycle letter from the Material Boy... You call hanging onto your X800XL for a few months "putting off your purchase"? LOL! Man, you don't know how to separate what you need from what you want - a very common illness these days.

I'm still using an Athlon 900 and a Radeon 7500! I *want* to upgrade and I *could* upgrade, but I can't justify it because a lack of a need. And there is value to having some system stability as well. And a need is defined as something that is absolutely necessary and to go without will cause hardship. Doing this is good for my bank account as well.

Also, part of the reason why I don't have a need to replace my "classic" CPU and video card is that I don't have as much time to play the existing games I have, let alone new ones (getting married and having kids tends to do this). And is playing a cutting edge game worth $60 to me? Maybe. Is it worth $60 plus a $1500 upgrade? NO WAY! There are many better ways to spend $1560 and I can find some other less financially demanding game to amuse myself.

That's the attitude you need to have if you want to go back to the days of your grandparents (people who lived through the 1930s). Focus what you actually need rather than something you merely want.

Another difference is that in the past, labour was relatively cheap compared to the cost of electronics, which meant that it made more sense to fix something rather than replace it. Today, the reverse is true.

Peter Stern