Nearly lost in the news from Macworld was Apple's announcement of the new 64-bit Xserve G5. (Even fewer people noticed Xgrid, but that's another story.)

The G5 upgrade was no surprise; it's been anticipated since Apple introduced the PowerMac G5. However, as Computerworld columnist Mark Hall notes, the Xserve story is not so much about computing power or the G5 architecture. It's all about the price.

"...what's stunning is that Apple's marketers will price the Xserve system at $3,999. That makes the long-reputed price-gouging Macintosh maker the price leader for dual-CPU servers by a couple of bucks. But when you add in Windows per-client pricing, the savings become huge. Apple sells its systems with no per-client fees for Mac OS X. In contrast, a 25-user enterprise license for Windows adds $2,495 to the price of a dual-processor PowerEdge 1750 server from Dell Inc."

Meanwhile, just for fun, As the Apple Turns notes that the Virginia Tech supercomputer could get a lot smaller if the university decides to upgrade from Power Macs to Xserves.

"...1,100 dual-processor Xserves will take up less than a quarter of the space. If this swap-out really happens, Virginia Tech will have over 74 racks left over; time for another 3,892 Xserves? Surely the university can scrape together another $20 million or so to quadruple its baby's performance scores and knock that snooty Earth Simulator out of the top spot, right?"