Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> How is this any different to me just going out and buying a big 
> computer?

Or going out and buying a couple hundred big computers?  To do a week-long 
render? Then what?

 > As far as I can tell, the only difference is that you're
> renting compute power rather than buying it. 

For many "cloud" providers, yes, that's exactly the difference. Plus, you're 
renting by the hour, rather than by the month or year.  Why would you by 20 
high-end computers and rack them up in your house if you can rent it from 
someone else?

For Google, you're using proprietary APIs on their cloud, so if you want to 
take the bulk of it into your own machines, you can't. Until now, which is 
what that announcement was about.

> (And as we all know, buying 
> is usually cheaper than renting except for one-offs.)

It depends on how much you get with your rental. Maintenance? Backups? Rack 
space? Electricity?  Disaster planning? You still have to pay to run the 
things, and you still have to have stand-by capacity for overloads.

Of course, with something like Amazon, you can rent until your capacity 
warrants buying processors. And then you can use Amazon to handle the 
overflow, or the seasonal rush, or the new product announcement, or whatever.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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