Re: 2005 best year for iSeries in a DECADE

Steve Richter wrote:

On 4/3/06, Booth Martin <booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Was it ever anything other than a niche product?  Has our platform ever
been anything more than a significant but small part of a very large market?

Booth,

there has never been as large a price premium for the iSeries that
there is today.

Here is an article dated June, 2002 that describes the new rs6000
systems of that time:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/06/25/ibm_floats_regattale_power4s/

"... A base pSeries 630 with a single 1GHz processor, 1GB of main
memory, 18GB of disk and a CD drive costs $14,120. ... a four-way
machine with base memory and disk will cost $30,120. ...A four-way
pSeries 680 with 450MHz Power3-II processors and 1GB of memory and
18GB of disk has a list price of $42,477, and the four-way Model
270-44P tower server with the same hardware inside sells for $50,618.
..."

Those 2002 prices for the pSeries were comparable to the prices for
the iSeries ( and the rest of the industry ).  Now we fast forward to
2006.  The i5 is about 20% cheaper than it was in 2002 but the p5 is a
fraction of its former price. A 1 way 1GHz pSeries 630 was $14k in
2002. Today the p5 505 2 way 1.5 GHz is $4k!

-Steve