[CLUE-Talk] Portable servers?

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Thu, 2004-05-27 at 15:13, Angelo Bertolli wrote:
> http://www.naturetechws.com/
> 
> Their products seem to include portable SPARC workstations/servers, etc.
> 
> What is the advantage of having a "portable server" or is there one?  I'm
> not sure what to think about this.  Are there other portable SPARC
> machines, and are tehy useful at all?

Well... that they're portable? Just going out on a limb here, but that
seems like the main advantage. 

There are some situations where you might want a portable SPARC
workstation/server -- trade shows, sales demos, consulting. I'm sure
there are other reasons. I reviewed a "ruggedized" server a while back
for UnixReview -- beautiful piece of work, very expensive. But, probably
well worth it for anyone who needed to port around an SMP machine with
gobs of RAM -- it was just within the limits of a carry-on piece of
luggage. You wouldn't want it if you needed a server for general usage,
but if you needed a machine to take on the road for trade shows it would
have been perfect. 

There's also a company that makes SPARC laptops. They won't be
outselling Dell anytime soon, but I expect there's enough of a niche
market that they make a nice chunk of change. 

Zonker