I hope they figure out something better than "minimum power: unplug, maximum power: stick to 220 volt socket" :B

The industry support looks encouraging though.

SPEC is about the only benchmarking firm that I respect. As far as I care, programs dedicated for benchmarking are pretty much retarded, I'd like to see a lot more gaming timedemos and real-life application scenarios (IE rendering time in 3D Studio Max, exporting time in Adobe Premeire Elements, etc).

SPEC is more respectable simply because they're the only company/organization that attempts to compare across platforms. IE, how does a G5 compare to a Pentium 4? Mano a mano, or more like processor to processor.

I'm hoping that something useful will actually come of this. Having an industry (more specifically, OEM)-supported benchmark and starting point allows us SMB Admins to more easily design / configure a new server room.

As it stands right now, most Admins are likely either horribly over-cooling or under-cooling our rooms for the most part.

Keep in mind I've said SMB... we tend to wear a lot of hats and don't have the cheddar to hire a team of architects and designers. We also don't have the 6-9 months or more to wait for a comprehensive analysis and plan.

Spec the hardware for our needs now and down the road, spec the room to cool / manage the hardware, and then do it. Done.