Sun T2000 Review Part 1: Sun Sales
March 5th, 2006We’re currently evaluating the Sun CoolThreads T2000 boxes for a project we’re working on. At Jonathan Schwartz’s request, I’m blogging about my experiences.
These machines are looking pretty sweet. For instance:
- An 8 core 1.2 GHz UltraSPARC T1 processor
- The best performance/watt in its class
- They’re small
- They’re reasonably priced, starting at $3K for the T1000 and $8K for the T2000
- Did I mention they’re fast? Like double the speed of a dual 3.8 GHz pentium system.
Sun has this wonderful try before you buy idea going on. Except its not so wonderful in reality. Turns out the machines are in such high demand it takes forever to get ahold of one.
After I order my system, I get an email from one of the sales rep that said “thanks for the purchase, email Jane who will be your actual sales rep.” I think thats kind of strange, but I emailed her asking about possibly getting a T1000 to try instead of a T2. After a couple days they determine, no thats not possible. Oh well.
About two days pass and I start thinking… hmmm.. did they ship my machine? So I email. My sales representitive is OUT OF THE OFFICE (in caps because thats how it came in the email). I email again, finally someone else responds. My machine is not going to ship for another week. They are “ramping up product inventory.” Oi.
I emailed them a couple days ago asking for benchmarks relating to XML. No response. And once again my rep is OUT OF THE OFFICE. I also cc’d two others, no response from them either.
So now I’m in anxious anticipation of my machine. I’m hoping it actually shipped on Friday, but the comments here aren’t helping my confidence. All of them full of hope, but left still wanting their machine…
By now you’ve noticed this isn’t a review, just me protesting at the lack of machine to review and the crappy sales process. Heres hoping I get a machine and we can do part 2 next week!