Reliability
As far as I know, I've always been a proponent of "worse is better" - I favor "cheap and bad" over "expensive and good". I don't wear brand clothing, I don't use brand appliances and I definitely hate brand computers. The price/performance ratio is one reason. Case A. One $100,000 computer with a guaranteed up-time of 99.9999% - that's less than an hour of downtime in a year . (I sincerely believe that any actual computer with such a guarantee would cost a lot more than that.) Case B. Several computers with a guaranteed up-time of 90% - that's one day of downtime in ten, or more than a month of downtime in a year. How many computers are needed to obtain the same reliability as the first system? Well... the chance of one such system failing is 1 - 90% = 10%. The chance of two of them failing at the same time is 10% x 10% = 1% (therefore, the up-time of two cheap systems has increased from 90% to 99%). Adding a third computer will increas...