"Lux, James P" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The other, here at JPL,
I have heard about this contract before - and in my opinion, it is a horrible deal. The taxpayers get reamed and the vendor makes out like a bandit. (SNIP) >At any given time, there's a dozen or so kinds of computers >(desktop/laptop/PC/Mac) available, but since the configurations are >changing, and they have a 3 year recycle time, the key point being the 3 year lease. (SNIP) >Interestingly, the monthly cost for both organizations is about the >same ( a few hundred bucks a month for hardware lease+service). Let "a few hundred" = $200, and of course there are 36 months in 3 years, so JPL pays the vendor $7200 for each machine, plus "support" for this term. At the end of the lease the vendor gets the computer back, and they probably sell it for a few hundred dollars, just to sweeten the already cushy deal. The office staff may need support once and a while, but one can assume that the average JPL engineer or scientist can more than handle all their own PC software issues, and at worst would just need to swap a machine if there was a major hardware issue. In other words, the average support cost to the vendor for the technical staff is but a tiny fraction of what JPL pays them. Who's the vendor, Halliburton? Regards David Mathog [EMAIL PROTECTED] Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
