Talal Itani wrote:

Hello,

I am in the market for a good computer, with a dual-core CPU. I keep
reading that Athlon is better than Pentium, Athlon is faster than Pentium,
and Athlon is lower priced than Pentium. But if that is the case, why do
most businesses have Pentium based PCs and not Athlon based PCs? Surely most
businesses research the pros and cons of a product before they make their
purchases. Thank you for clarifying this for me.

T.I.



Well, it can get complicated because companies tend to buy pre-builts so
the builder's choices are a heavy influence but, of course, they try to
make choices the companies will buy.

However, the crux of it is that whatever criteria you (or the articles) use
to determine 'better' is not necessarily the most important criteria to
companies.

Companies want a stable, reliable, trouble free (as much as possible),
platform that performs the assigned tasks in a timely manner at the least
total cost.

To wit, 'faster' is not necessarily 'better', as long as it does the job in
a timely manner, and there's more to cost than just the initial purchase,
of which processor price differential is a minor component.

There are also similar considerations from the system builder's perspective.

For example, Intel makes compilers and chipsets in addition to just the
processor and you can build an entire system from Intel parts. So what?
Well, if you're a builder and have some integration problem there would be
one place to go to get it resolved vs the confusion that can arise from
multiple vendors each claiming the problem is someone else's. And that
costs money, which might be considered more significant than a nominal raw
processor cost differential.

Many companies use a similar line of reasoning in buying pre-builts. Cost
isn't just the 'cost of repair' because, presumably, the machine serves a
money making purpose, no matter how obliquely, and it isn't serving that
purpose when not working (which includes the stable/reliable/trouble free
points I mentioned earlier).