And however long you’ve been around computers, there is one name that has *never* been associated with processing power: Microsoft.

“[...] the CX1 comes configured with the Windows High Performance Computing Server. That’s a rarity among such high-powered computers as most users prefer to run Linux because it’s seen as more stable.”

John, what’s wrong with you? Is it that you don’t know the truth, or that you can’t admit it? Repeat after me: Linux is not “seen” as more stable, Linux *is* more stable. There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

“Indeed, it appears this is part of a concerted push by Microsoft to establish itself in the supercomputer market.”

And I’m sure that they’ll be just as successful as they have been with the Xbox, the Zune, Vista …

“You’d think firms able to drop $25k plus on a single computer would already have some serious technical expertise”

You’d certainly think that such firms would have more nous than to purchase a serious computer that is hobbled by a toy operating system.

Although this Cray is the world’s “most powerful supercomputer” it will encounter great difficulty running the above application and OS due to the sub-par graphics card. It is highly recommended that you turn off Vista 2010′s “Broken Airo Glasses” graphics engine and not start more than one Office applications at a time.

Microsoft is aware of this problem and it might be fixed in the next Service Pack, if you are lucky.