That's just the cost of hardware. How much more do you think it would cost if they included all their research and development, installation and assembly hours

That's just the cost of hardware. How much more do you think it would cost if they included all their research and development, installation and assembly hours, etc? That is just the cost to buy all the components they have. If you budgeted that in you'd just have a bunch of boxes at your office that weren't even wired up. On the other hand, from Dell or Sun you at least have all the hardware in the chassis, if not some basic configuration and OS install done for you. Go with Amazon and you've already got it racked up in a data center with dedicated techs and replacement parts on hand. It isn't a fair comparison.