Re: [cobalt-users] Restore CD

[Kris Dahl <krislists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

on 8/7/00 6:18 AM, Graham Wright at graham.wright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> I recently bought my first RaQ3 to try it out in our environment. The lack
> of an OS restoration CD is a very big negative in my mind and reflects badly
> on Cobalt. All other hardware vendors that we purchase from include the base
> OS and it's rather tacky that Cobalt have chosen not to do so.

To continue the comparison with 'all other hardware vendors' how much would
similarly configured system cost you?  Say a Microsoft solution that Mr. du
Toit was comparing with earlier.  To think that you are paying for that
restoration CD in the cost of that machine is niave and foolish.  It like
you're not paying for Office 2000 Small Business when you buy a Dell
Dimension--you know that Microsoft isn't giving that to Dell for free.
There is *always* a cost and there is *never* such a thing as 'free'.

Cobalt is trying reduce costs and I for one appreciate it.  Many of their
customers--ISP's etc--have racks filled with Raqs.  They don't want to pay
even $25 per Raq for a restore CD.  They'd rather buy one or two and save
the costs overall.  Most people never need it.  In fact I have only needed
to use it once on any Cobalt machine (it happened to by a Qube2).  That is
an excellent percentage.  I will give you that we had the foresight to
purchase one in advance--after all it was my job to be prepared for most any
situation.  I know my client appreciated our foresight and that he saved
about $99 on a Qube2.

> We had another 15 systems on order from CDW but I'm going to cancel those
> and start investigating alternate systems. Since we were going to use them
> for a test lab the 1U form factor is the appealing thing for us rather than
> the extra features for ISP's.

See you are even Cobalt's target market!  YOu're the one they are trying to
save money!  I've got a simple formula.  Say Cobalt amortizes the cost of
maintaining the restore CD's over ever Raq and it works out to be $25 per.

15 x $25 = $375

You only need one, and they are saving you more than $250 bucks by offering
it as an option.  Use that saved money to go get a keg an a whole lot of
pizza for your technicians!  They'll thank you for it, and we'll all be in a
better mood.

-k