A quick message on saving money on support from HP. I took over the IS Mgr position at a company that had annual hardware/software maint. expences of over $60,000/year. I removed all of the software upgrade, manuals, and other unnecessary items. We had determined that we would be upgrading the machine in a year, so they were not needed. Second, I reduced all hardware maintenance to bare minimum. Only left CPU and harddrives for repair, but no PMs. Memory and other periferals I removed completely, since they rarely failed, and if they did, were not critical to operations. This lowered our costs to $15,000/yr. But the best thing I learned was to change our 4-hour response time to next-day. Now, before you start cringing, let me finish. I found that with 4-hour response, our monthly costs were $1245/month. But if I changed to next-day, they went down to $610/month. Now I was worried about waiting a day for help, so I asked the rep if there is a way I could get boosted up to 4-hour in an "emergency". She said "Yes, but it would cost $300 to do a one-time bump to 4-hour repsonse time". I thought "Hmmmmm. I save $600/month, and if I need 4- hour response, I just have to give them a P.O. number for $300." So, I went to next-day response, and had my acctg dept give me a standing P.O. # that I could use if I needed to bump up to 4-hour. With these savings, I'd have to need two upgrades to 4-hours EVERY MONTH, just to break even. Heck, I barely need a 4-hour call once a year. So, don't be afraid. Go to next-day, and have a PO at the ready to upgrade your service, when needed. You might be surprised at the savings. Randy Keefer * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, * * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *