Important questions need asking:

Will they be buying the extended warranty?

Will they pay the extra £20 to have Linux pre-installed, or will it run Vista Premium Ultimate Supercomputer Edition Pro X?

When it dies in 6 months, will they have to pay the shipping costs to have it returned for a 2 week repair?

When it comes back, will it have been reformatted with Vista, regardless of its previous configuration?

Will it come back at all, or will Dell lose it somewhere along the line and have to supply a new one?

I hope they've factored in plenty of leccy for this project. Last I heard, their machine room kept going titsup for want of power...

you've mentioned everything else

...play Crysis on it...! They're trying to build the worlds most powerful gaming machine...

The'll stick Symantec A/V on it and it'll run slower than a 3 legged dog in a coma.

Robert Rankin used it in one of his books for a demonic infestation in the world wide web. Wonder if there is any connection... maybe it they where compaq servers...

Anyone want to bet on how long before the blow...

One has to wonder if it will drive the users insane, and be the cause of a Biblical cliff jumping expedition?

I'd like to see such a machine doing BOINC or folding@home.

UCL's machine room no longer goes tits up due to inadequate power. They have a new machine room that goes tits up due to inadequate cooling instead...

So "Legion signalled a more democratic age in supercomputing" should be "signalled a more demonic age"?

Bob Howard, BOFH and ISO-9000 certified supernatural investigator will hopefully look into this.

... will it play quake?

Dell can't build a reliable PowerEdge (or even a reliable RAID controller for that matter). They have no business in the HPC sector. Legion must describe the number of support incidents this one system will cause.

there was once a sunday toon on userfriendly.org, with the theme of mergers no one wants to happen, starring the Dell Dude (remember him? before he got busted with the jazz ciggies). the plot was a union between Dell Computer and the US Christian Evangelical Church, and the tag line was,

DUDE, YOU'RE GOING TO HELL...

Will it randomly drop about half the disks in its array, and when they call Dell they'll be told it's a known issue with the firmware on that PERC controller?