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Wayne,

I agree with what you are saying. But notice how things have shifted. ryanjo was blaming MS for this when in fact it is clearly Dell causing the confusion by putting a home OS on business class machines and most likely selling them with the business class price tag - in accordance with your example. Also, in looking back at previous posts, the brick-and-mortar stores (i.e. Office Depot, et. al.) are just as guilty.

The first people I would place blame on is the OEM's and the store-fronts, not MS. And I say this because placing blame in the right place is the fastest way to get resolution. More often than not, the biggest and easiest target (i.e. MS) isn't always the right target.

Shifting over to alborg, I would advise caution with alborg's approach to handling equipment procurement. For one, notice this comment:


This is a fine approach assuming the business can handle the downtime. Having a warranty with next day on-site repair is important for some of us who simply cannot handle having an employee wait a few days for a replacement to arrive. Any machine I purchase is with the idea of it lasting at the very least 3 years. Period. And I try to get four years out of them when I can.

Lastly, note that Mr. alborg is planning on staying on Windows XP until 2014 when support finally ends. Again, I disagree with this approach. As he states himself, yet another version of Windows will be out by then. By then, Mr. alborg will be probably four versions behind on Windows. At that point, he will incur a large amount of expense upgrading not only desktops etc. but also line-of-business applications.

Those who know me know that I have always recommending staying in the MIDDLE of the upgrade curve. You never want to stay cutting edge because then you'll always be upgrading which is way too expensive. However, you don't want to be last as then you'll have a major jump to make when you finally do need to upgrade and that jump will exhaust all the money saved by waiting so long.

My business skipped Vista and is standardized on Windows 7 now. We will probably skip Windows 8 and go for whatever is after that (Windows 9, I suppose). This way we are in the middle. Upgrades are controlled and, therefore, so is cost. Another example is Exchange Server. We went from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 - skipping Exchange 2007 altogether. I can tell you now there will most likely not be a migration path from Exchange 2003 to whatever version of Exchange comes out next - just like there is no migration path from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2010. Those who cling to Exchange 2003 for 5 more years will find themselves in quite the expensive predicament when they need to upgrade. They will have to migrate to Exchange 2010 first then on to whatever the lastest version is - in effect doubling cost.

This isn't to say that alborg's approach is a bad idea. It's fine, as long as the trade-offs are to your satisfaction. But it is important to be aware of what those trade-offs are.

One man's trash is another man's treasure.
One man's money saving idea is another man's expense.

ad infinitum.

One final comment. Ladies and Gentlemen it is very important to remember that I do not disagree with people for the sake of disagreeing with them. When I disagree with you or make recommendations contrary to what you may believe, it is not to "stir the pot." I am trying to accomplish one goal and one goal only - to save you money. IT can cost a great deal as we see time and time again with some of the posts on this forum and on forums elsewhere. In many cases, those who complain about how much money they spent can trace the expenditure(s) down to one or two notable mistakes that are simply best avoided. In other cases, the person in question was just trying to come out cheap and cut to many corners. Please, look at what I am saying and try to see the logic in it. If you don't see said logic, then ask me to explain again. And don't forget what Bert said in another thread. Somestimes I mean well but it just doesn't come out as intended. My apologies in advanced for those situations.

For further reading:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2006.10.windowsconfidential.aspx

Can anyone venture to guess as to why I posted that article?

JamesNT