I Drink the IBM Kool-Aid

It never fails. Some time ago, I donated one of my spare IBM Intellistation M-Pro workstations to a worthy cause in Indianapolis. When the vinyl graphics business in our garage and my wife's new work-at-home job required hardware upgrades for their M-Pro workstations, I figured it would be no big deal. Unfortunately, the Intellistation M-Pro 6850 models have become more rare over the last year or so, something I hadn't really counted on. In the meantime, cannibalizing my own 3.0Ghz IBM Intellistation M-Pro for those badly-needed parts was just the opportunity I needed to find yet another orphaned corporate lease IBM and give it a loving home.

Mission accomplished. This rescued IBM Intellistation Z-Pro 6221 is slightly smaller in width and depth than the previous Intellistation M-Pro models, but packs 2 each hyperthreaded Xeon 3.2Ghz processors (4 logical processors in the Windows Task Manager), 4Gb memory, 320Gb HD, 8Gb SSD pagefile, and Radeon HD4670 video at 1920x1080 resolution under the sheet metal.

I'm pleased to report that the little fellow below is quite happy running Windows 7 Pro at a brisk pace, with blue (appropriate color for IBM!) antifreeze gurgling through its innards!