176 lines
3.4 KiB
HTML
176 lines
3.4 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
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<HTML
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><HEAD
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><TITLE
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>Overview of the Market</TITLE
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><META
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NAME="GENERATOR"
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CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK
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REL="HOME"
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TITLE="The Unix Hardware Buyer HOWTO"
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HREF="index.html"><LINK
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REL="PREVIOUS"
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TITLE="Introduction"
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HREF="intro.html"><LINK
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REL="NEXT"
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TITLE="Buying the Basics"
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HREF="basics.html"></HEAD
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><BODY
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CLASS="sect1"
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BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"
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TEXT="#000000"
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LINK="#0000FF"
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VLINK="#840084"
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ALINK="#0000FF"
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><DIV
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><TABLE
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SUMMARY="Header navigation table"
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CELLSPACING="0"
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><TR
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><TH
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COLSPAN="3"
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ALIGN="center"
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>The Unix Hardware Buyer HOWTO</TH
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></TR
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><TR
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><TD
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WIDTH="10%"
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ALIGN="left"
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VALIGN="bottom"
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><A
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HREF="intro.html"
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ACCESSKEY="P"
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>Prev</A
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></TD
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WIDTH="80%"
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VALIGN="bottom"
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></TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="10%"
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ALIGN="right"
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VALIGN="bottom"
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><A
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HREF="basics.html"
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ACCESSKEY="N"
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>Next</A
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></TD
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></TR
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></TABLE
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><HR
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ALIGN="LEFT"
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WIDTH="100%"></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="sect1"
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><H1
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CLASS="sect1"
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><A
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NAME="overview"
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></A
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>2. Overview of the Market</H1
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><P
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>The central fact about PC hardware is that de-facto hardware
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standards have created a commodity market with low entry barriers, lots of
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competitive pressure, and volume high enough to amortize a
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<EM
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>lot</EM
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> of development on the cheap.</P
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><P
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>The result is that this hardware gives you lots of
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bang-per-buck, and it's getting both cheaper and better all the time.
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Furthermore, margins are thin enough that vendors have to be lean,
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hungry, and <EM
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>very</EM
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> responsive to the market to
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survive.</P
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><P
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>One good general piece of advice is that you should avoid
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the highest-end new-technology systems (those not yet shipping in
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volume). The problem with the high end is that it usually
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carries a hefty <SPAN
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CLASS="QUOTE"
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>"prestige"</SPAN
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> price premium, and may be a bit less
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reliable on average because the technology hasn't been through a lot
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of test/improve cycles.</P
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><P
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>There used to be a real issue with low-end PCs as well,
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because there used to be a lot of dodgy crap PC components out
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there going into boxes made by vendors trying to save a few cents.
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That's not really a problem anymore. Market pressure has been
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very effective at raising reliability standards for even low-end
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components as the market has matured. It's actually hard to go
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wrong even buying at the bottom end of the market these days.</P
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><P
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>I put together the first version of this guide around 1992;
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Unix-capable systems are now ten to twenty times cheaper than they were
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then. At today's prices, building your own system from parts no
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longer makes much sense at all —so this HOWTO is now more oriented
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towards helping you configure a whole system from a single vendor.</P
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="NAVFOOTER"
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><HR
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><TR
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><TD
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WIDTH="33%"
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ALIGN="left"
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VALIGN="top"
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><A
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HREF="intro.html"
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ACCESSKEY="P"
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>Prev</A
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></TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="34%"
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ALIGN="center"
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VALIGN="top"
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><A
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HREF="index.html"
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ACCESSKEY="H"
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>Home</A
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></TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="33%"
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ALIGN="right"
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VALIGN="top"
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><A
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HREF="basics.html"
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ACCESSKEY="N"
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>Next</A
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></TD
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></TR
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><TR
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><TD
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WIDTH="33%"
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ALIGN="left"
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VALIGN="top"
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>Introduction</TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="34%"
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ALIGN="center"
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VALIGN="top"
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> </TD
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><TD
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WIDTH="33%"
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ALIGN="right"
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VALIGN="top"
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>Buying the Basics</TD
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></TR
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></TABLE
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></DIV
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></BODY
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></HTML
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> |