Nobuhiro Iwamatsu wrote:
Hi, Yes, this may be expensive compared with other ARM machines. However, this is not a hobby use. This has a guarantee of quality which a company can use for a server etc. And you can receive support, when there is a problem.
True, the trouble is you are getting up over the price range of intel soloutions. The benchmarks I can find (though I can't find any specifically for the armarda XP) seem to put arm clock for clock roughly on a par with the intel atom. One can get a supermicro dual core atom board with dual gigabit ethernet for arround $220. Obviously a case, PSU hdd etc would have to be added to that but it's still nowhere near the price of your devices. Yes the openblocks device is smaller and lower power but not by enough to make it compelling IMO. If arm is going to succeed in the server market then IMO they need to be at least in the same ballpark pricewise as comparable intel soloutions.