Wirt after Steve after me:

>> <<As Cortlandt also said, I think it's reasonable not to expect that
the
>>cost and support for a 918PM be half that for a 918 8-user license
>>machine. ....>>

>> Aren't we already there? It looks like an end-user-useable (but not
>>developer-useable) 918LX would be around $15K. As I remember it, we
paid
>>something like $18K for the dual-P133 HP NetServer LS/2 a couple of
years
>>ago, and current NetServer LX's with dual PPro-200s and 128MB RAM are
>>around $17K (and that's with no hard drive).   ........

<<Unfortunately, that price is not low enough to get a "908" into a
dentist's
office, or a hardware store, or jewelry store. The price has to be
somewhere
between 5-8K, at the most. Whatever software is put on the machine is
sure to
double the installed system's price. The surest way to keep software
costs
down is to set the hardware prices as low as they possibly can be.  >>

Steve makes a good point.  I'd kind of forgotten how much we
paid for that NetServer LS/2 !!  And if real-world useable NetServer
LX's are now going for upwards of $20K, a 918 eight-user license
machine is certainly well within the "ballpark" of that as far as the
core HP hardware and software.....  But as Wirt said there is still
the issue of third party applications, database utilities, report
writers, etc. (if there is any etc. for a small production machine).

Wirt's small business examples are probably not using a high-
end NetServer as their standard of comparison;  they're looking
at something lower down on the scale.  Note that NUWC-KPT
just took delivery of some pretty nice Micron PC servers;  think
the base price was something like $7K... although think they
were going to add some more memory after receipt;  and that
price probably includes a pretty good GSA discount....

Anyway, if somehow HP could sell a base "918PM"  or ~=
for as low as $5K-$6K, that would be great..  However, I'm not
holding my breath for that to happens.  Maybe it would be
possible to get the cost for a minimalist four-user machine
down to the upper end of Wirt's scale.  If HP could even do
a base 918PM for just under $10K it would help;  being able
to buy a production HP 3000 for under $10K would perhaps
break an important psychological barrier...  Then if the third-
party vendors would play ball like many of them have already
done on the 918DX and Wirt and Alfredo indicated they would
do on a four-user production machine, maybe it would just be
possible to sneak a 3000 into some of those dentist's offices
and hardware stores......

Ken Sletten