Beware: The pitfalls of the System i 515

Lukas Beeler has a post on his blog about the things to keep in mind when considering buying the System i 515. When IBM rolled out the i5 515 Express and i5 525 Express in April, most of the talk was around price. They were purported to be entry-level boxes, with the cost starting at about $8,000.

Beeler writes about some of the issues with the 515 — it’s I/O intensive, it probably doesn’t have enough RAM for your needs, and included software maintenance is short-term — and how upgrading them is going to add to the cost of the machine, probably by 50% to 75%. So suddenly that $8,000 becomes $12,000 or $14,000.