[latch]

As long as the price > operating cost, they'll eventually make money on it. You could say that they take a different approach to say Rackspace or Softlayer which try to recoup the initial investment during the first month.

[sp332]

But you have to subtract the operating costs, and still make your money back quickly before you have to pay to upgrade the hardware again.

[latch]

In 3 years time, they'll still be selling these machines. A lot of companies still offer the Xeon's 3220, which, if I'm reading wiki correctly, first shipped in Jan 2007.

[rootindex]

I have been using them for 8 years, they upgrade the hardware every 6-12 months to the most recent spec