We don't have a limited number of slots!
We just go down a lot. It's VERY beta at the moment; we literally take the whole thing down about once a week. So if we know of some major problem, or we're down, we just don't let people on (since they'll have a bad experience).
You're right though that the prices are probably lower because of this. That's why we have a thing on our website that says "*Prices are from the sfcompute private beta and don’t represent normal market conditions."
If you'd like on anyway, I can let you on, just email me at evan at sfcompute, but it may literally break!