What line of work are you in? "Proprietary garbage?" Have you ever worked on "real" Compaqs, HPs, IBMs, or Dells? I'm not talking about their consumer products, like the Prosignia, Prolinea, Pavilions, Dimensions, etc... I'm talking about the business class systems. I have never seen any clone systems that can supply large companies who must rely on their systems with the level of reliability or the quick resolution of failures that the major manufacturers can provide. When we sell Dell Optiplex systems, it's not unusual for some of our clients to buy 200 at a time. And we've never had problems getting parts in a timely manner, usually next day, unlike trying to get replacement parts from major distributers. Warranty is a nightmare with clone systems: With the majors, no problem at all.
And that's just with the workstations. For servers, there's NO comparison. IMHO, the best server around is the Compaq (now HP) Proliant. You simply get very good performance, terrific managability, and superp service. Again, this is something that you don't get with clone systems.
Mark