things aren't how they used to be (Score 1)

Seen that iCube or whatever they call it? flashy buggers. The double-headed G4s are pretty good too.

Anyway, point is, you can get one for $6.2 k that substantially out-specs our university mainframe (although it might have some sort of nuclear-powered disk stuff, RAID or summat, vs the G4's Ultra160 SCSI). 6.2 isn't that much cash, really.

The real question, of course, is how it stacks up against PC hardware. Something comparable from Dell costs 6.7 ... that's 2x450 G4 vs 2x733 PIIIX., the rest is identical (more or less). I'm not up on G4 vs PIIIX, but it seems like PC hardware isn't substantially cheaper, and a Mac is ginuwine RISC hardware.

My real hope is that an official UNIX on a Mac will help the PowerPC linux community produce something a bit more wonderful.