I've been Involved In the PC Arena Since 1978, I've personally Owned just about every Personal Computer on the Home Computer Market since there Birth, and still own most of them. the Company im currently Employed by and have been for 5 years as a Applications Specialist/Software developer VB/VBA/ASP/PHP/MySQL and Computer Tech, MSCE and A+ Certified.

Now the problem Lies in this company thru the Absolute Ignorance of the Purchase and Sale and PC's used in the HMA/ portion of the company.

constantly i am to order IBM - DELL and gateway machines in the usage of our projects, recently it has been IBM ("yep IBM"). the most recent was a intel pentium 4 w/ 1 GB ram and monitor for $2,800 ("yes i said $2,800") Our COST and not a Server or Redundant SCSI arrays or anything special, just a pretty much a plain PC with a 19" LCD
monitor with 1GB of ram...

now passing along to our customers for a 200% Markup i can't imagine what the end customer has to pay for what there getting, and this is happening ALOT over the past year, and service is called thru IBM not Us and the intergrator, so here i sit not using my Skills and actually Owning my own Company after hours. Were as i sell the SAME Configuration to my Customers for around $650.00
with onsite support and repair, now wouldn't it be more Buisness like to offer these services to our Customers, and us make a profit of sales and repair?

i don't know what our boss has in his head for buisness practices but it the wrong Stradigy to be using. how does your Company Handle sales and repair of machines you distribute with your projects??

Confused MSCE...

 

Even though I put quite a bit of effort in being able to build and deliver known reliable PC configurations, I think the best way is not to handle them at all. There is no particular return in any part of the PC life cycle. I will build to order, source PCs for a customer, or provide guidelines and requirements. But the best, most profitable way, seems to be the latter. That way they can get the best price, are the happiest and you avoid most of the negatives. The others are far more problematic and people will always second guess you. Commodities are not a good fit in a custom design and services mix.

Regards

cww