Dear Fellow Managers:
I would not have brought this up had it not emerged on its own, but
please note that these special offers are only for Educational
Institutions located in the United States a fact which has pissed me off
(and no doubt other non-US educational customers who happen to check
Compaq's web pages) to the extent that the whole issue has put me off
continuing to buy Compaq Alpha products. The whole story is not
appropriate for this list (but will be digested and sent to the
appropriate senior marketing exec at Compaq), but suffice it to say that
back in November we were getting price quotes from our local supplier
which were on the order of three and even FOUR times these prices. They
were quickly cut (in certain cases by a factor of two) after the
appropriate noises were made, but there was no way that we could get them
to sell us an XP1000 (or a DS20E) for anything close to the prices quoted
here (and we wanted to buy 3-4). For an XP1000, we are still talking about
a factor of two!
We know that we have to pay slightly higher prices than paid in the US,
however, there is a limit to what is an acceptable uplift. I hope that
my fellow non-US scientists in Europe and elsewhere will also not agree
to be "ripped off" by unreasonable uplifts. Maybe then, Compaq will get
the message and begin to treat us in the way we were accustomed to being
treated by Digital.
Cheers,
Peter
Peter Stern
Chemical Physics Department
Weizmann Institute of Science
76100 Rehovot, ISRAEL
email: Peter.Stern_at_weizmann.ac.il
phone: 972-8-9342096
fax: 972-8-9344123
>
> --On Tue, Feb 6, 2001 5:30 PM -0500 Jeff Berliner
> <jeff_at_popmail.med.nyu.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks to our world-class purchasing department, we missed out
> > on the DS-20E promotion Compaq was running at the end of last year.
>
>
> Education Folks Only--
>
> I've already spoken with Jeff, but wanted to ensure everyone is aware that
> yes, last quarters PRC (Personal Research Computer) program by Compaq
> expired at the end of December. The good news is that the current education
> only special includes the same XP1000, DS10, and DS20E configurations. ES40
> systems have also been added in both Tru64 and VMS models. The pricing is
> superb! As a side note, you can't get the refurbished systems less
> expensively. We've tried, our customers have tried....
>
> I don't want to turn this into an advertisement, but if you're interested
> in the packages and pricing:
>
> <http://www.spcnet.com/s1.htm>
>
> There is also another Compaq program now out that covers everything from
> x86 desktops, servers and options to the largest StorageWorks solutions
> (MA8000/EMA12000) for VMS, Tru64, AIX, HP-UX, NT etc. The database list is
> over 1100 lines deep or we'd have this up and available as well.
>
> Cheers
> Michael
Received on Wed Feb 07 2001 - 16:22:08 NZDT