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Competition is good
This can only become a good thing for competition.

When large organizations specify a single vender en mass, that vender has the power to overcharge for their product. With large organizations and governments specifying ?Intel?, instead of ?Intel or equivalent?, that allows Intel to overcharge for their processors.

AMD?s processors have been very competitive, performancewise, to Intel since the introduction of the Athlon 5 years ago. Yet, Intel has consistently obtained a $50-$200 pricing delta on its equivalently performing processors over AMD because of ?Intel Only? RFP?s.

As a taxpayer, I want my tax dollars spent as wisely as possible, including computer procurement. Computers should be purchased based on their primary uses, and processors judged based on their performance in those uses, and then a price/performance judgment made. If creating MP3?s and MPEG?s is the primary uses of the computers for the government employees, then extra weight should be given the Pentium 4?s for their excellent streaming media performance. If basic office and database functions are the primary uses of the computers of the government employees, then extra weight should be given to the Athlon(XP?s/64?s), for their excellent business application performance.

Once the performance comparison is made, collect your bids, and take the lowest bidder. (OK, I know this scenario is stacked in AMD?s favor right now, but Intel needs to either make a processor that is better at basic office applications, or lower their prices. That is the essence of competition). If all customers made this comparison, all Intel customers would benefit from lower prices from Intel processors. The flipside is that AMD would seize the opportunity to raise their processor prices incrementally to meet Intel somewhere near the middle.

In a basic PC, do you care whether the computer says Western Digital, Maxtor, or Seagate inside for your hard drive? Different hard drives have different performance characteristics, but does anybody really care that much? Your computer vender supplies the drive from the manufacturer that offered them the best volume contract price at that time. If you have 2 processors that perform equivalently for you uses, shouldn?t you choose the most cost effective?

OTOH, perhaps we SHOULD give the government workers the processors that encode MP3?s the fastest so they don?t waste as much of their time burning music and have more time for their office tasks.
Posted by: L A D   Posted on: 04/21/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use
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good argument  dg mh | 04/21/04
Surely not  rapson | 04/21/04
Competition is good  L A D | 04/21/04

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