That's generous of them, but prgmr costs me $6 (actually, I went ahead and got the $20); not to mention several shell accounts that I have with open source projects, LUGs and friends.

Just last night I plugged a USB disk into a dead Dell laptop where half keys where missing from the keyboard, and it was an instant Slackware server, tucked under the wifi router.

I myself offer free shell accounts to Lisp programmers, if they agree to be put in /etc/sudoers and do some admin chores, like helping others, if/when they can; I have a bunch of Common Lisps, slime and emacs ready to go :-)

They have to agree to be put in sudoers? I'm sure you'll have lots of trouble finding people willing to have root access on your server.

I am going to go ahead and assume he means his friends have to agree to help each other out with admin tasks.

I'm working through SICP. How can I get on the "others" list?

My email is in my profile, what Schemes do you want installed?

According to the rep I chatted with this is only open to residents of the US and they've run out of servers for the program.

Just chiming in that we've hosted Gameriot.com and a number of other mid-tier (500k-1.5m unique) sites from ThePlanet for about four years now. We actually originally had a free hosting deal for two years when they went after their 'gaming' segment with Insomnia365.com. That was awesome :)

Their support is solid, boxes are fast, and the only complaints I have are with their RIDICULOUSly (as in more-so than Verizon) complicated bills/invoices, the fact that they only accept credit card as payment, and the occasional hardware failure that gets resolved slower than I'd like.

I am suspicious of free services/offers which require me to give up my credit card info :-(

Be suspicious, sure, check out the company in question... but don't let that disqualify them. Theplanet is, uh, rather large and old. Older than I am.

I've done a 'first month free' trial, and let me tell you, I certainly won't be doing that again without /somehow/ confirming identity first. When you offer something as abusable as a *NIX host for free, you /will/ attract abusive users, and I think asking for credit card info and/or charging a dollar or something sounds like a reasonable way to make sure that you are giving this away to someone you can at least threaten to come after if they do abuse the service.

If I was in their place, I would be suspicious of applicants who refuse to give credit card info while asking to consume a $200/month free service. ;-)

$200/month free service? Try more like $40. Those are servers who were fully amortized 2-3 years ago and otherwise would get sent to the $49-$99/month scrap bin where their margins are actually pretty incredible (the only real cost is the $12-$15/month they pay to power and host the server).

Why are you looking at cost and not the retail value? Just the unmetered 10Mbit line itself will cost you over $100-$150 for a co-located server. I think this offer is a pretty good deal.

Well then looking on webhostingtalk.com, the retail value for this is about $60-$75/month, not $200. There are quite a few tricks the dedicated server market plays to keep costs inline when over-selling. Small hard drives, slower processors, overloaded routers, limits on usage (like how dreamhost won't let you use your 500GB of storage as backup), multiple tiers of bandwidth (I wouldn't be surprised if these servers are put into a specific prefix where all outgoing bandwidth from that bandwidth is sent over a mixture of low-end providers like Cogent/HE/Bandcon, and creative prefix announcements send most of the incoming bandwidth over one of those three providers as well).

There are at least a dozen things an operator could do in order to make an offering like this cost them nothing on the books, and on the same note they would still sell these servers in their closeouts/specials section, or use them as freebies in larger deals.

Hmmm:

Dual Xeon 2.4, 1GB RAM,

Ok the ram is a little under-generous but can you point me to where I can get a dual Xeon 2.4 (=8 core) server for $40/month?

>can you point me to where I can get a dual Xeon 2.4 (=8 core) server for $40/month?

http://www.joesdatacenter.com/Dedicated_Servers.html

It's a dual Xeon 3.0 with 2G of RAM and it's $60.

Can you point me to the paragraph on this website where they claim to be providing 8 core cpus?

http://www.theplanet.com/sand-castle/

I'm fairly certain the first 2.4ghz Xeons came out in late 2001 .. These could easily be 8-9 year old servers.

There's more to the cost than just the power. Don't forget the manpower and hardware costs for disk/RAM/chassis swaps and so on when they break, bandwidth, the fact the space it is occupying in the rack could be filled with a much more expensive server (assuming rack space/power is limited.) Also, the small amount it contributes to the demands of overall resources such as admin staff, monitoring systems, systems administrators etc.

The hardware costs for disk/RAM/chassis swaps when they break are zero, they come from cannibalized servers probably from the same lot that are long-since amortized.

The labor? Negligible. Most dedicated server providers put their engineering dollars into services, automation, and network capacity. I know a dedicated server firm in San Francisco that pays it's button pushers and hard drive swappers $15/hour, or about 50% more than they would make at McDonalds .. In comparison, the nominal cost of labor for the average task is almost zero. Most dedicated server companies also have banks of systems administrators working in India for $5 per hour to further reduce their costs.

I've run two companies that provided dedicated servers as part of their overall offerings, worked at another two, and consulted for another two. The numbers say: Old Hardware Is Profitable But Expendable.

Since you have experience in hosting solutions, I would be interested in some recommendations on good dedicated solutions.

The Planet is one of the biggest players in dedicated server market.

Is CentOS really the developer's choice? Last I used CentOS for a web server was about 2 years ago and we switched to Ubuntu because the CentOS repos were getting rather stale. Then the lead developer dissappeared, or something. How did that shake out?

I use CentOS on all of my live/dev servers, and it's wonderful.

It may seem stale, but I think a better term is - "incredibly stable". The servers haven't been rebooted in 4 years, and the only downtime has been due to programming errors or (web) software updates.

Great marketing tactic for a hosting company that is well known. +1

This sounds like what we do. Only that we can run on different operating systems and perform real time data replication and server migration through virtual appliances. =)

I'd imagine this is feasible because they are getting more value in free advertising from this than the cost of running the servers.

2.4-3.2 Xeon can mean a _lot_ of things. My guess is that these are old servers that they'd otherwise firesale to avoid having to pay dump fees.

I signed-up, but then they sent me a verification email asking me to send them a photocopy of my id and credit card. I'm a little bit worried. Did I get suckered?

I'm trying to cancel this account and the guy doing it doesn't have a clue how to close an account. I will NEVER use the planet for anything and I will rail against how incompetent they are.

I got suckered one way or another.

Here is the entire transcript. Yes I was mean, but man, really?

Thank you for choosing The Planet, please stand by while we connect you to the next available agent… You are now speaking with Samir Salim! Samir Salim: Hi my name is Samir Salim. Samir Salim: Hello, Thank you for contacting The Planet! to further assist you, May I please have your Orbit Username/ID? you : Hi Samir, I want to completely delete my account: XXXXXXX Samir Salim: Do you mind holding for a moment while I access your account? you : not a problem Samir Salim: For verification purposes, What high school did you go to? you : richfield Samir Salim: Great, Can you please verify the Email and Billing address on file? you : jeff@consultutah.com you : PO BOX 970219 you : Orem, UT 84097 Samir Salim: Thank you, and who am I speaking with? you : jeff Samir Salim: Thank you Jeff, now you are wanting to delete your account? you : yes Samir Salim: Do you mind holding while I research that you : not a problem Samir Salim: Thank you for holding, I will be with you in just a moment, your patience is greatly appreciated you : ok Samir Salim: Are you wanting to cancel the service? you : yes Samir Salim: Have you submitted a cancellation request? you : i canceled the cloud server service, but couldn't see how to submit a complete cancelation request. That's why i'm talking to you Samir Salim: How long ago did you submit the cancellation request you : minutes ago Samir Salim: Once the systems updates again, it will automatically close the account you : can you delete my credit card info from the system you : ? Samir Salim: That can be processed in orbit Samir Salim: Is there anything else I can assist you with? you : no it can't I tried and it won't let me delete the cc info you : hello? I need you to delete my cc info and my account Samir Salim: You will have to create a ticket \ you : isnt that what I'm doing? Samir Salim: once the ticket is created we will process that request you : I HAVE submitted a ticket. Samir Salim: Sure, is there anything else I can assist you with? you : have you deleted my account yet? Samir Salim: We will get to it as soon as possible you : that would be now Samir Salim: I do apologize, but it will be processed in the order it was received you : the billing dept seriously cant do this? what kind of inept business is the planet? Samir Salim: We are working on the ticket right now, please stand by for any updates Samir Salim: Is there anything further I can assist you with? you : I am just waiting until my cc info is gone and the account is deleted Samir Salim: One moment you : yes, I am waiting Samir Salim: Thank you for your patience Samir Salim: The ticket has been updated Samir Salim: Is there anything else I can assist you with? you : I signed up because of a mention of The Planet on Hacker News. I am currently commenting there on how difficult and time consuming it is to close an account with The Planet. you : I will be posting this entire transcript and the ticket information there too. Samir Salim: You will have to submit a cancellation request in order to cancel your service you : I did that. you : But I am asking for you to close my entire account. Samir Salim: Once the request is submitted, the information will be deleted you : How do you close the account you : The request was submitted an hour ago Samir Salim: Once you submit a cancellation request and when it is processed you information will be deleted you : The cloud server has been deleted. but the account has not. you : How do I close the account you : ? Samir Salim: I am looking into that for you right now Samir Salim: I do apologize for the delay, we are still looking into your account Samir Salim: Thank you, your patience is greatly appreciated you : OK, I'm waiting 5 more minutes. Then I will post this entire transcript to Hacker News where I first found out about The Planet and I will contact the Texas Better Business Bureau about this. Samir Salim: Do you have an IP for the hardware you acquired? you : I never had any hardware. It was just a cloud server account. That cloud server is gone. I want my credit card info removed from your site and my account completely closed. you : Repeat: I want 2 things: you : 1. My credit card info removed from the site you : 2. The account closed you : That's it. That's all. Samir Salim: Thank you for you patience. we are still trying to process your request you : Please tell me in your own words what you are trying to accomplish for me. At this point I don't think you understand what I want. Samir Salim: Thank you for holding, we will have the account cancelled after midnight Samir Salim: your credit information will then be deleted from the account you : midnight which time zone? Samir Salim: CST you : ok, i will check in 2 hours then Samir Salim: Is there anything else I can assist you with?

They first announced this what, a year or two ago? I was wondering if they ever got any headway. Or am I mistaking them with LayeredTech?

not just no, but hell no.

it's not like a vps I have control over is expensive enough to justify the risk of exposing data to an unknown party.

What do you mean?

But how are you more private with a VPS? That is what I don't understand.

Well, assuming this is a reputable company, theoretically it's the same as a VPS. I think (perhaps too much) about leaks, possible ways that information I want private can get public, which is perhaps a vestige of the habits of my youth. The likelihood is that this company is just giving a free trial to sell hosting later, but theoretically they could do all sorts of poking around especially if you start getting traffic. If I'm spinning up a server on EC2 or Slicehost, I'm a paying customer of a known reputable company, I can safely assume it's in their interest to respect and guard my privacy. So, I need to balance the cost of a VPS against replacing those knowns with unknowns and I prefer to keep it simple, which is perhaps paranoid but I prefer to keep that mentality, because I know if I ignore the 1% chance 100 times, then it's pretty well guaranteed that one of those times, it wasn't something I should have been ignoring.

Other commenters said that theses are one of the biggest hosters around, though.

lol well, it was more of a quick visceral reaction than a detailed analysis, I probably would have forgotten about it if you didn't ask for my reasoning :]

I've actually got half a dozen computers more powerful than the one they're offering just laying about my apartment right now, I have a nasty habit of collecting hardware.