drizzt81 said:quick aside: The cost of manufacturing WinXP and Win2K3 is pretty clost to 0. Opterons are server products, so the margin is pretty big, and once again, manufacturing is vrey cheap in comparison to the development costs.
I really doubt that anyone is loosing money on this. They might be earning less than if this had sold retail, but there is no 'red ink' on the bundles.
As to 'buying too many' I definetely agree with that problem.
From that perspective I'd agree. However, considering the fixed value asigned to the products its still somewhat of a loss. While AMD is likely not loosing any money, someone probably is. One of the sponser companies likely bought everything from the other vendors at a certain price and the bundles are being sold. Of course the pressing of XP and Server 2003 disks is nothing, I wouldn't say that it doesn't cost them something. There would be a fixed value to the software.
Tyan has included a $300+ motherboard, and the best price on the Opteron 246's is $301 on Pricewatch. I'd say that they probably aren't loosing too much. Cost on the processor is probably around $200 before the distributors get their hands on them.
No matter how things do work out economically, it would be foolish for them to provide too many of these bundles. At some point it does more harm than good.