[geeks] Ethernet Switches

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 @ 21:21 -0500, Lionel Peterson said:

> >From: "Jonathan C. Patschke" <jp at celestrion.net>
> >Date: 2006/10/17 Tue PM 03:12:51 CDT
> >To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
> >Subject: Re: [geeks] Ethernet Switches
> 
> >On Tue, 17 Oct 2006, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
> >
> >>> I'd imagine the switching latency on a ProCurve should be vastly
> >>> superior to a ciscoSystems 2900-series switch.<SNIP>
> >>
> >> What makes you say that?
> >
> >A fellow who used to hang out on Alex's IRC server did a benchmark
> >between 2900s and ProCurve 4000s (roughly the same age hardware).  The
> >4000 kicked the 2900's tail.  It would not be unreasonable to expect
> >that newer HP gear is at least as decent.
> >
> >Then again, their printers have gone to crap.... :(
> 
> They've been "Fiorina'd", which can be abbreviated as "F'd"

As much as I dislike her, I don't see that as her problem.

HP's inkjets were going to crap years before she arrived. The entire
industry of inkjet printers is crap. 

I don't think Fiorina did that, though certainly she did do plenty of
other damage.

Also, I'm not sure lasers have really gone to crap. Yes, certain lovable
models are gone now and not replaced, but there are also a lot of models
now that were not even possible ten years ago.

Modern lasers overall are faster, more reliable, have more features, are
smaller, lighter, have larger duty cycles, and longer MTBF than the
previous generations.

I can now buy a relatively small IBM PostScript laser that will run 24/7
on huge loads without issue, doing the job that ten years ago required a
$10K departmental laser of much larger size.

I got a little HP 1320 for home use. To get the same reliabilty,
features, duty cycle, and MTBF ten years ago would have cost me about
$3000, and it would have been three times as heavy and large in size. I
paid $250 for it onsale at CompUSA of all places.

So... I do miss the old "tanks" like the HP 3 and 4 series, but at the
same time I see an awful lot of good lasers out there which I much
prefer over the old monsters I used to have to take care of.

I'm not sure the laser market is all bad.


-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["The object of war is not to die for your
country but to make the other bastard die for his." -- General George S.
Patton]