# Do you tell a customer your server specs if he asks?



## Minmeo (Sep 10, 2014)

Hi I am wondering if a customer submits a ticket to you for sales and asks what the specs of the server is if you tell them or not. I asked one of my providers and was told they couldn't give me the exact specs and said only that they use genuine intel processors and use hardware raid10. I was just curious of the details (CPU, memory and hard disks) but was wondering if it is normal to not tell this information if a customer asks.


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## fizzyjoe908 (Sep 10, 2014)

That behavior is not normal. Communication is key.


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## TekStorm - Walter (Sep 10, 2014)

If you asked then they should know, that is just weird and it would make me ask questions. Because what if its not up to pare for your needs. Another question i would ask if i go with them and it doesnt meets my needs will i get a refund, i bet not.


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## SGC-Hosting (Sep 10, 2014)

I'll give a customer the exact specs of the server they're hosted on and I'll give a potential customer the minimum specifications of live servers.


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## drmike (Sep 10, 2014)

I am not a provider, I am a customer and a customer who at times consults with hosts on their communications.

That said, there is ZERO reason to mask the details of your servers (CPU, CPU series, release, disk type, etc.). The only reason folks get naughty and uber strange about such, in my experience, is they are using old gear that is underwhelming and customers MAY fail to see value in paying as much for services on degenerated, and long ago paid for gear.

When customers ask for such, existing customers, one has to expect they are either performing comparisons to a new provider they are considering or that they are experiencing service related slowness / problems.  There are always a few random folks who just ticket for discovery purposes both good and bad, as well as annoying.


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## DomainBop (Sep 10, 2014)

> The only reason folks get naughty and uber strange about such, in my experience, is they are using old gear that is underwhelming and customers MAY fail to see value in paying as much for services on degenerated, and long ago paid for gear.



...or they don't want to tell the customer with the 2GB RAM plan that the 32GB RAM E3 they're using has been slabbed into 4 8GB RAM slabs...not pointing fingers at anyone, but...


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## devonblzx (Sep 10, 2014)

Unless it is a new host or a large corporation, I would suspect a single host does not have one default configuration.  I know for a fact we build different configurations every 6-12 months and usually have servers in service for up to 3 years.  How do we compensate?  We provide users more CPU resources on older servers than newer servers to balance it out.  So answering that question specifically would require me manually assigning your server to a node.

Just my two cents.  Choose a host with a money back guarantee, test out the performance before you go live, and have reasonable expectations for your budget.


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## Sam (Sep 11, 2014)

We reveal the hardware we use. It's included in a number of advertising threads. #transparency


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## Aldryic C'boas (Sep 11, 2014)

We list our deployments in our Wiki.  A provider not wanting to disclose what hardware they're using means they have a reason to hide it.  And that reason is typically bad news for the client.


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## zed (Sep 11, 2014)

Is there a valid reason to hide the server specs? I can't think of one (but I'm not a provider, so..).


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## Aldryic C'boas (Sep 11, 2014)

Valid, yes.  Ethical, no.  The only reason you'd want to hide what hardware you're using is to keep your clients from finding out that you have them hosted on shoddy gear.


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## Epidrive (Sep 11, 2014)

Transparency is key. I cant see any reason to hide server specs in the first place.


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## MannDude (Sep 11, 2014)

I guess I am lone wolf in this then...

Some companies don't deploy the same hardware in all their nodes so each build may vary either slightly or greatly depending on what it's designed to do and how many people it's built to accommodate. Also, the person you're asking may not actually _know_, as with large companies the sales people aren't the same people who are going to have access to just quickly check the specs on whatever node was setup last and most likely going to be used for your VPS if you order it that day. Could they ask? Sure, but keep reading.

I've actually never given the exact answer to that question when asked in any job of mine. It's not a 'shame' thing, it's a "Does it really even matter?", thing. Is what I say today going to be true if they place the order two months from now? I see they have a service active from 2 years ago, but that node is 'less powerful' than the one launched earlier this week... Will they complain when they learn the specs of the new node and then demand an 'upgrade' of their old VPS, even if they've reported no issues in the past but think they're missing out on something better? Etc, etc.

What's the difference between using spec A and spec B? If Spec A looks better on paper but is oversold to shit, Spec B server would still likely give you better performance even if the node is 'less powerful' than the oversold Spec A server, right? It's just not an important metric and shouldn't be used to determine the worthiness of a service, in my opinion. I'd rather be hosted on a server with less powerful hardware with less customers on it than a massive node with a ton of customers on it. Maybe that's just me though. 

Genuine Intel CPUs, quality server grade hardware, gobs of RAM, hardware RAID10 and servers built specifically to handle the load we intend to place on them. If you're curious if the VPS you may buy is 'good', go read reviews. The hardware means nothing in the grand scheme of things.


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## bpsRobert (Sep 11, 2014)

MannDude said:


> ........
> 
> Genuine Intel CPUs, quality server grade hardware, gobs of RAM, hardware RAID10 and servers built specifically to handle the load we intend to place on them. If you're curious if the VPS you may buy is 'good', go read reviews. The hardware means nothing in the grand scheme of things.


I certainly wasted alot of money on hardware then


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## MannDude (Sep 11, 2014)

bpsRobert said:


> I certainly wasted alot of money on hardware then


I'm just saying that the best hardware in the world in the hands of a host who overloads it to hell isn't going to give the end-user better performance or reliability than a host utilizing hardware that "isn't as good" with a more reasonable number of containers on it.

I'm not saying that newer, better hardware isn't "better", I'm just saying that hardware specs alone shouldn't be a measurement of what's good and what's not good. For that, just read reviews. The best hardware, if in the hands of someone trying to push it to it's limits in terms of how many containers can be crammed on it, won't be as good as to the end-user.

Sorry. I've just had my fair share of VPSes in the past that were on 'good hardware' that were oversold to hell and back. Provider A and Provider B may use the exact same node specs but one give better performance than the other, just because it's managed better.


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## OSTKCabal (Sep 11, 2014)

The hardware can still mean something if you have an honest host. I say this because not all VPS hosts oversell. (I know I certainly don't oversell any of our services, even at our relatively low prices.)

I believe that hosts should be transparent about the hardware they use. At the least, they should offer an example of their configs if they have deployed different configurations over time but keep older servers in service. As an example, we use a mixture of E3-1230v2, E3-1270v2, and E3-1230v3 for our game server and VPS nodes. All of our nodes use the same storage config (2x 128GB Samsung 840 Pro in SW RAID-1 for Minecraft; 2x 500GB 7.2k WD RE4 in SW RAID-1 for Source; 4x 250GB Samsung 840 Evo in LSI 9271-4i HW RAID-10 for our current-gen VPSs, etc.)

Just my personal view on things. TL;DR - No reason to keep that information a secret.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Sep 11, 2014)

Hardware builds tend to be a competence marker for the host, as well.  There have been quite a few hosts I was interested in signing up with - until learning what hardware configs they were using destroyed my faith in them actually knowing what they were doing.

But, to play devil's advocate, there have also been a couple of hosts that bragged about having specific setups, but once you look at the spec list you realize that particular configuration isn't possible and the host was lying out of their ass.  So aye, a host simply claiming what hardware they use means next to nothing if the client doesn't know how to interpret said data.


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## msp - nick (Sep 11, 2014)

Yes - Tell the customer the specifications and do not go around the bend with lying - telling them other things, ignoring the ticket.

Just remember that customer may turn from a $2 hosting account to a contract worth $50-100 down the road.


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## Serveo (Sep 11, 2014)

We use standardized hardware for our nodes, though this can be different for our HV's. Giving your total setup price is not a goal seen competition might copy a setup (i.e. storage setup), but we reveal the hardware spec's without any problem.


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## drmike (Sep 11, 2014)

Oh no!

_*"Genuine Intel CPUs"*_

I see that crap all the time from newbish hosts in mass.

Is there some black market out there for counterfeit Intel CPUs?  Do we have hosts running non-genuine CPUs?  I know, folks are running big VPS servers on ARM servers  (well they will in the future).

What I see in MannDude's example of not spilling the beans are shops where the customer support likely is insulated from the nodes / servers themselves and can't get at the data.

See there is a whole business model for paid off old and steady nodes and the customers lingering on such, versus stiffing them, and ... charging them excessively perhaps compared to others who ordered last year instead of them 2 years ago.  But such requires integrity and customer care vs. autopilot entitlment dissing of the customers folks take usually for granted.

When I see / hear of resistence to such at hosting companies [to disclosure of details]   I know they are cooking the nodes, selling BS, embarassed, etc.

Yeah oversell is some shit common rip off lots of hosts don't deal with proactively or even reactively proper (i.e. migrating containers as needed, eyeballing abuse on node, etc.).  But claiming RAID10 with 12 drives when running RAID1 with 2 drives is a bigger issue and fraud.  Lots of point blank liars in this space and it's going on at some of the biggest and most well known hosting outfits owned by BILLION dollar companies too.  So little guys need not jump and feel I am pointing my laser anywhere 

The whole oversell on a 32GB limited E3 just needs to die in a fire already. E3's never were intended for this.   Overselling 32GB of RAM, well, doesn't take much to fill that and go stupid on ratio.  But me, folks running 16GB and 32GB RAM nodes, yeah I have to wonder WTF they are doing and all big picture [limited reasons to run such nodes in my opinion - niches].   Not enough resources to write down / justify / ROI the build with proper controller and enough drives.

I see E3 + SSD + cache crap and I see a midget with a Porsche to compensate.

Spare me the E3's are capable, they are.  But I don't use them and I won't buy VPS services running them.


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## devonblzx (Sep 11, 2014)

drmike said:


> Spare me the E3's are capable, they are.  But I don't use them and I won't buy VPS services running them.


It depends on what you're running.  Our processor intensive line runs mostly on E3s because of users who need higher clock speed.  An E5-2600 series with only ~2GHz clock will perform worse for heavy single threaded applications than an E3.   It all depends on the purpose the node serves.


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## OSTKCabal (Sep 11, 2014)

drmike said:


> **SNIP**


drmike,

I'd appreciate the chance to defend our usage of E3 processors if you're willing to take the time to consider my points.

The first, and arguably most important, thing in my view is that the E3s offer excellent performance. Not to diss E5s, but the entire E3 series simply kicks any E5's ass in terms of single-threaded performance. It's what they were designed for. We utilize this performance to match our target audience, which is game server and performance consumers. The ones that need the clock speed and performance the E3s supply.

The second thing I'd like to bring up is that they're cost-effective. They're easy to buy, easy to deploy, and use much less power than most E5-based setups. This allows for a higher density and more physical servers per rack, which is also arguably important to almost any hosting provider. I can also attest to the fact that a host doesn't need to oversell to make the investment worth it; we can easily meet our intended ROI and still support a decent level of service without overselling of RAM, CPU, or I/O.

Before you think I'm trying to discredit your entire argument, I should throw in that I agree that the VPS and hosting industry in general is filled with dishonest hosts and "experts" who are completely blinded by money, money, money. But users have to be on the lookout for those rare gems that are honest and open about their business, and supply what they say they're going to supply every time. When I think of a good VPS provider, only a few names come to mind. But they're there, they're around, and they're known by the community as a whole. I suppose the base message here is that you shouldn't throw out the entire batch because of a few bad eggs.

Just my thoughts. Typed out really quick, so sorry if it doesn't make much sense.


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## fm7 (Sep 12, 2014)

Linode:

model name: Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz (CPU Mark 16,000)

bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync: 840 MB/s

UnixBench 5.1.3: *540*

And then, so what?  Hardware matters but in virtualized servers (fancy name for a glorified shared hosting) it is more a marketing ploy as also are the "number of vCPUs",  bitrate and everything else. Unfortunately the average buyer of VM decides based on *price* and resources advertised, and sometimes data center, carriers (but not capacity or  % of each one in the mix), node  hardware specs and crap synthetic benchmarks (DD, Unixbench, downloads). Of course these data *may* be enough for many people but an informed prospect could ask more detailed info and I don't see good reason to not answer (or come clean).


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## NullMind (Sep 12, 2014)

its not unheard of providers not wanting to give their topology details, some spend allot of time perfecting the perfect setup (switches, networking types, san types, hardware bands, etc) and don't wish to make it public because of competition (so others don't steal their topology, the perfect setup is indeed an advantage), not customers, but the spec of the hypervisor/host machine itself, most providers don't have an issue with releasing those details.

Carlos


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## drmike (Sep 12, 2014)

Welcome to vpsBoard @NullMind.

The inside blended mix creation has its place and semi valid.   But big picture, pretty darn rare.

By the time you usually start talking SANs and exotic network configs you are looking at big interconnects, lots of interconnects and generally other disk storage approaches [like devaluing the use of in chasis storage so much or using it strategically].

Even in these instances running a Xeon E or L whatever, E3 or E5, about 95% of the time.  So disclosing that, nearly always tells little to nothing about the special sauce, formular, high end deployment that makes the magic.

Toppology as you said, yes, feel free to protect that  No reason to disclose such big picture in great detail.


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## Serveo (Sep 12, 2014)

Interesting to read the E3 vs E5 pros and cons. We personally are now looking to invest and test the microcloud from Supermicro. Here the desision might go to the E3 as they deliver high clock speed and have a lower TCO. Though our concern lays in the L3 cache.


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## OSTKCabal (Sep 13, 2014)

Serveo said:


> Interesting to read the E3 vs E5 pros and cons. We personally are now looking to invest and test the microcloud from Supermicro. Here the desision might go to the E3 as they deliver high clock speed and have a lower TCO. Though our concern lays in the L3 cache.


If your concern lies mainly in the cache but you still need good per-core performance, the E5-1600v2 (or even E5-1600v3 if you wait a bit for wider availability of DDR4 RAM) series will bring you closer to E3-style performance than anything else from the E5 range, with the added benefit of 10MB-15MB (v2) or 10MB-20MB (v3) of L3 cache.. The downside is that these things are power hogs, though this has been more balanced out recently.


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## Shivam (Sep 13, 2014)

Well to be quite frank i'd tell them the server specs because their isn't a reason why you shouldn't its not like anything will happen ? so my answer would be tell them the exact specs of the node their on or the one they wish to go on.


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## msp - nick (Sep 14, 2014)

Jayseanp said:


> Well to be quite frank i'd tell them the server specs because their isn't a reason why you shouldn't its not like anything will happen ? so my answer would be tell them the exact specs of the node their on or the one they wish to go on.


What comes to mind is honesty is the best policy as I said ;- people will lose trust in your brand.


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## eva2000 (Sep 14, 2014)

fm7 said:


> Linode:
> 
> model name: Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz (CPU Mark 16,000)
> 
> ...


knowing some hardware specs is important for some i.e. how well the servers will perform for https/SSL and openssl is real world

i.e.



still trying to figure out what processors


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## Ravi-EstroWeb (Sep 14, 2014)

drmike said:


> Oh no!
> 
> _*"Genuine Intel CPUs"*_
> 
> ...


 :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: ............

On topic:

I cant see any reason for Hiding exact server Specs [hardware specs].

Disclosing of setup is quite reasonable....as its the main key for better stable performance


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## Minmeo (Sep 15, 2014)

Thank you everyone for all the responses. I understand better now.


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## jvkz (Sep 16, 2014)

Customer should know what he is going to get and on what hardware... Even if a provider is going to use different hardware config if he ask he should be given details to hardware config so that he scale the number of cores as per his needs and CPU speed.


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## iann_lfcvps (Sep 18, 2014)

We've always shared our specs. This particular market considers all of the details when making a purchase so it reduces a lot of the questions that might be initially asked before ordering I've found.


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## raindog308 (Sep 18, 2014)

Customer: "OK, you've got super-fast E5s and 96GB of RAM and SSD drives - awesome.  Here's my paypal!"

Vendor: "Heh, wait until he finds out we're single-homed on Cogent..."


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## devonblzx (Sep 18, 2014)

raindog308 said:


> Customer: "OK, you've got super-fast E5s and 96GB of RAM and SSD drives - awesome.  Here's my paypal!"
> 
> Vendor: "Heh, wait until he finds out we're single-homed on Cogent..."


Or there are 500 virtual servers sharing that system. 

It is all relative with virtual servers.   A VPS on a Xeon 5400 could be faster than a VPS on an Dual E5-2600 depending on how many users are sharing the system and what the neighbors are running.   Hardware is more important for the host than the customer.   It all depends on how the host allocates and manages that hardware.   I've never heard of a host upgrading their equipment to host the same amount of servers, it is always a benefit to upgrade systems because they can host more.


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## HalfEatenPie (Sep 18, 2014)

raindog308 said:


> Customer: "OK, you've got super-fast E5s and 96GB of RAM and SSD drives - awesome.  Here's my paypal!"
> 
> Vendor: "Heh, wait until he finds out we're single-homed on Cogent..."


That was me with Datashack. 

"Oh snap a Dual L5420 for 30/month!  I'd use this for super processor-intensive work!" 

* a little later*

"Wow trying to download the calculations I did on this is painfully slow.  I wonder why." (Only has Cogent and HE).

F7U12

I mean, HE isn't bad, but I have a much better connection if they had Level3 (we're talking almost 80-100 ms difference)


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## DomainBop (Sep 19, 2014)

raindog308 said:


> Customer: "OK, you've got super-fast E5s and 96GB of RAM and SSD drives - awesome.  Here's my paypal!"
> 
> Vendor: "Heh, wait until he finds out we're single-homed on Cogent..."


Vendor: "Heh, wait until he finds out he's sharing that 1Gbps port with 300 torrenters and will be lucky to get dial-up speeds"

Vendor "Heh, wait until he finds out I oversold the CPU and I/O on that E5 to the point where he'd get better performance from a Pentium Pro"



> "Wow trying to download the calculations I did on this is painfully slow.  I wonder why." (Only has Cogent and HE).


If you want painfully slow get a VPS with a provider in Iceland who relies solely on FarICE to connect to the rest of the world.  You'll be lucky to get over 1.5 Mbps speeds.  tl;dr don't even think of using anything in Iceland as a backup server


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## NullMind (Sep 19, 2014)

Good points there guys, thats the problem, also benchmarks can be misleading, if you have just happen to hit a provider new HV with near 0% utilisation and another at 80%, you have no way to know that the HV you are on is at 80%, performance might be worse, thats why a continuous performance check is sometimes required.

Also people tend to forget about support, having the fastest system in the world does you no good when it's not working.

C


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## incloudibly (Oct 14, 2014)

Yes, server specs are available to any client who would ask for.


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## William (Oct 16, 2014)

In general: Vaguely. Dual E5s and 100G+ RAM.


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## Dan (Oct 21, 2014)

Let's try a real world example shall we?


@Francisco , I'm quite interested in your services at BuyVM. I'm looking at the 256MB OVZ servers in Vegas, what s the specs of the node/s in that location? Do these come with DDoS protection?


Now I don't expect Fran to publicly post his specs I more expect a PM but hell who knows he's a great guy..


I'll keep you updated if the stallion PMs me.


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## clarity (Oct 21, 2014)

Aren't their specs posted on their site? They are very open with what they run.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Oct 21, 2014)

Dan said:


> Let's try a real world example shall we?
> 
> 
> @Francisco , I'm quite interested in your services at BuyVM. I'm looking at the 256MB OVZ servers in Vegas, what s the specs of the node/s in that location? Do these come with DDoS protection?
> ...


And for our real-world reply 

"You can find a full breakdown of our hardware here - http://wiki.buyvm.net/index.php/hardware .  We did do a recent hardware upgrade for the 256+ plans in Vegas; those nodes are now running E5 2630L processors rather than the listed 5638's (announcement on the upgrade here - ), we just haven't gotten to updating the wiki yet.  And aye, DDoS Protection is available on any VPS plan we offer".


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## Dan (Oct 21, 2014)

BAM! Professionalism at its finest, thanks!


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## HalfEatenPie (Oct 24, 2014)

Aldryic C said:


> And for our real-world reply
> 
> "You can find a full breakdown of our hardware here - http://wiki.buyvm.net/index.php/hardware .  We did do a recent hardware upgrade for the 256+ plans in Vegas; those nodes are now running E5 2630L processors rather than the listed 5638's (announcement on the upgrade here - ), we just haven't gotten to updating the wiki yet.  And aye, DDoS Protection is available on any VPS plan we offer".


You're such a wet noodle


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## AuroraZero (Oct 24, 2014)

No I generally lie to my clients and tell them they are hosted on 8086's with 2.25 MB Floppy drives. Their connections are generally 9600 Baud rate modems on old junkie phone lines. 

Really gets the clients nerves going when I tell them this, and makes their blood pressure shoot through the roof. I love to see their eyes pop right out of their heads and their hands start shaking.  :angry: :huh:

Makes it even better when I start laughing and finally tell then the truth though.   People need to have more fun their lives. They tend to take things way to seriously sometimes.


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