[K12OSN] So close....

[David H. Barr]

On 11/8/06, marrandy <marrandy at chaossolutions.org> wrote:
> On Wednesday 08 November 2006 10:41, Eric Brown wrote:
> > Our problem with dealing with Dell directly is that they will often
> > quote us higher prices than if we were Joe Public walking in off the
> > street.  Our principal has even resorted to using his personal credit
> > card and purchasing computers to save several hundreds of dollars per
> > machine.

> How do you save several hundreds ($600/$700/$800) of dollars per machine ?
>
> What   'machine'  are you talking about ?

Typically it's not so much (in my experience) that Dell explicitly
charges edu/npo -more-, per se.  It's just that their pricing
structure is heavily dependent on deep discounts, not all of which
apply for a particular config in the home/smb/premiere sites.

When I was in the nonprofit sector, I would typically end up a)
determining what spec machine I wanted, b) carting it up in home and
small business desktop and workstation lines, and c) sending the
lowest of those four quotes to my representative who would typically
match or beat it.

It was a tedious process, but could frequently get my desktop orders
down several hundred.  When you're buying $300 desktops and slapping
charity licensing on them though, the wiggle room is fairly small.

-dhbarr.