>> Well now... It seems that even if you store some absurd amount of data 
>> like 1GB (think how many years that would take to upload...) it costs 
>> less than 50p/month. Which is nothing. (I currently pay £5/month.)
> 
> Yep. I think my last bill was seventeen cents.

To quote the bitch from Friends, "ooo, that's *interesting*!"

>> On the other hand, 30 days of instance time on EC2 is almost 80$. 
>> Exchange rates vary, but this compares wildly unfavourably with my 
>> current hosts' demands of £15/month.
> 
> Is that for a machine where you can install your own OS and such? Or is 
> that for just a web host, where you're (for example) sharing an Apache 
> server with others?

That's for root SSH access to a Linux box that you can install whatever 
you want on. (Although presumably you can't change the OS - how would 
you talk to it while you're installing it?) Several flavours of Linux 
availbable.

It is a *virtual* server though - your stuff runs in a virtualisation 
system. (They claim to guarantee a certain minimum performance level 
though.)

If you want a *dedicated* server (i.e., a real physical box that's just 
for you) it's drastically more expensive - like £90/month or something.

>> The verdict: EC2 is absurdly expensive.
> 
> It's also designed for you to rent it briefly, not for a long time. 

As with any kind of renting, there will always be a point where renting 
becomes more expensive than buying. The question is only where that 
point is.

If you just want to *run* stuff, EC2 sets the tipping point really, 
really low. (E.g., the POV-Ray thing I'm currently trying to do will 
probably take at least a week, more likely a month. And I want to do a 
whole series of others afterwards. For the price EC2 want, I could 
probably buy a killer PC several times over.)

The advantace of EC2 is either
- You only want it for a little while.
- You want to do something that requires massive amounts of Internet 
bandwidth.

Buying a PC which out-performs EC2 in compute terms only isn't 
expensive. Beating the connectivity EC2 is likely to have would be... 
uh... "expensive".

> If you want to rent a machine for three hours to do a 
> render, it makes a lot of sense.

It does? Surely it would make more sense to just run it on my own PC for 
3 hours, while I go watch TV or something. Costs £0. :-P

>> For about £200 you could *buy* a half-decent PC. If you leave it 
>> running for 1 year, it will have cost you [slightly more than] £200.
> 
> Well, you would need the connectivity too, which I understand is pretty 
> expensive where you are. :-)

Maybe that's it: Rendering stuff doesn't require gigabit Internet access!

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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