Re: [BITS] UCOP-DELL Agreement for U.C. Berkeley

David Willson wrote:
> I forwarded the original post to our Systemwide Dell representative and
> have copied his response below:

>> Vostro is a small business brand of machine that is not recommended to
>> institution customers for a variety of reasons. In fact it is not even a
>> product line in the UC/Dell agreement.

If we were a bank or an insurance company then this way of thinking
might make sense. However, what we have at UCB is computing
anarchy, which is the only way a place a diverse as UCB
can run. As some of the responses to my message, and other
messages to Micronet on other topics, have shown, different
people and groups want different things in a computer. The
differences between a small business and an institutional computer
really don't matter for most of the computing that gets done
at UCB.

> Vostro is listed under the full catalog along with everything else, but
> there isn't a discount offered on it - that line didn't exist when we
> were putting this agreement together.

Then it should be clearer what the UCOP agreement covers.
If you have to go through the CalNet ID process to see the
special UC Berkeley prices, it's not unreasonable to expect
what you then see to be special UCOP prices.

> Because it is a system for small business, there will be regular
> promotions on the box.

I'll repeat what I said the last time this came up. The fact that
Dell offers various prices, depending on how you reach their
web site, is Dell's problem. There's nothing that says Dell,
or any other vendor, is required to give us special prices.
But, given the fact that there's a special pricing agreement
in place, I think the agreement should mean something. Or, it
should be clearer what the agreement applies to.

> You will find in
> the example you cited below, that that price does not include even a 3
> yr on-site warranty.

Right. Neither the UCOP or the standard small business price included
a 3 year on-site warranty. Some people want it and some people don't.

> Again, there are many reasons why so many
> institutional customers buy Optiplex and Latitude systems. It is much
> more than price point. It is TCO.

I think what this really means is that Dell promises not to change
the internal components of Optiplex and Latitude systems for a fixed
period of time. They don't make the same promise for Dimension,
Vostro, Inspiron, and the others. For some places, even some groups
at UCB, this is important. For a large portion of us, it makes very
little if any difference.

-- 
Jon Forrest
Unix Computing Support
College of Chemistry
173 Tan Hall
University of California Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
94720-1460
510-643-1032
jlforrest_at_berkeley.edu
 
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