Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 14:08:08 -0600 (CST) From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com> To: dennis@etinc.com (dennis) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Watchdog timers (was: Re: Multi-Port Async Cards) Message-ID: <199601312008.OAA07401@brasil.moneng.mei.com> In-Reply-To: <199601311822.NAA17067@etinc.com> from "dennis" at Jan 31, 96 01:22:08 pm
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> >> Doesnt matter...dont make enough on it to really care, even at 195. But i > >> find it > >> interesting that someone would be willing to spend the time to build one if > >> they only needed a handful. You've already spent more on time thinking about > >> it then you'll save! > > > >At $169, to purchase a dozen would cost me $2028. Unlike you, I am not > >operating a revenue-generating organization, and $2028 is an appreciable > >chunk of one of my paychecks, which is ultimately where the money would > >come from. > > Ok...Ok...all I was saying was that if you build it yourself it will cost > $50. and you cant design and manufacture 10 cards for the difference. If I build them myself and build 12, it costs me $600 - I count a $1428 difference. That's significant financial savings. > Have a beer or something and relax! Trust me, I'm perfectly relaxed. :-) > Plus at $100/hr or so (I hope you value your time at least that > much), its a lot more than 2000. If I'm actually building them myself and not shoveling the task off onto one of the folks who owe me many favors.. but then again, I don't have sooooo many customers that my time is completely booked, anyways. > Its the old opportunity cost issue.....if you have nothing else to do then > your time is > valueless....but if you could be doing some other productive task then the > opportunity > cost is the value of what you wont be doing while you do it. Yes, and I always have something else to be doing. However, you're calculating the cost differently than I would. Money is certainly an issue. But, think about this: If I spend 20 hours working on boards that can automatically reset my systems, that is a fixed-cost investment to solve 90% of a particular class of problems - lockups. (sometimes hardware dies). If I don't, then I have to travel 20 miles to the office once every week or two to reboot a hung system. Sometimes this is convenient, sometimes not. Since the round trip takes an hour, after 40 weeks I have spent that same 20 hours to live with the problem, but have not actually solved the problem. This is a compelling reason to consider spending time to solve the problem. I regain my time for "productive tasks" by reducing the time I spend doing nonproductive tasks like driving. But it's more of an investment than a short term gain. If I had unlimited money, I'd buy your watchdog board. But then again, if I had unlimited money, I would have bought Cisco routers and Annex terminal servers and quad-HyperSPARC Sun workstations. One of the compelling reasons for people to go with FreeBSD and PC's is because it is so economical. > If I were selling 50,000 cards a month like SMC maybe i could sell them for > $2. above > cost.....but (fortunately for my sanity) there isnt quite the same market > for watchdog > timers. I know. As I said, that's why I'm not pounding on you about the price of your cards :-) ... Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Greco - Systems Administrator jgreco@ns.sol.net Solaria Public Access UNIX - Milwaukee, WI 414/546-7968
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