Jim Royce bemoans the hidden cost of options: > Back in September 1997, I called HP to find out the price of > the new 100Base-T Network Adapter (B5427AA) for the HP3000. > We were given a verbal quote of $1,795.00 with Option 001. > Now we're getting ready to order the 100Base-T card and .... > there is an Option UAT (Unlimited user license) for $8,000.00!!! Been there; done dat.... Same thing happened to us, going through the HP Federal Business Center last September. We got a quote for two cards (were planning to run two 100 Mbit subnets into our 959 at that time). We lucked out a little bit in two ways: (1) We have only a 100 user license (all those client jobs don't count against that limit); 100BaseTX for 100 users was a lot let than UNLIMITED. (2) With the 100 Mbit switching hub setup we are ending up with, decided we could get along with just one card... So cut our order in half; ended up being just slightly more than original quote for two cards to get one card. > ..... (There was a post to this list about this option back in > October 7, 1997, but I missed it). That might well have been me. Thought back then I was going to get away with getting the cards for the quoted price, since we had already put in our order... No such luck; turned out the type of small-purchase contracting process we used does not lock in the contract price until the items are shipped.... !@#$%^&* :-(( > The biggest rant is that this very same card, with a > different part number (A3495A), is available for the HP9000 > for the same price ($1,795.00), but (to my knowledge) does > not require an Option UAT! deja vu, all over again.... hmmmm.... wonder what would happen if we changed our order to two A3495A's ???.... I did this on the two external HP DLT 4000 drives we ordered and received just recently: The "for HP 9000 and NT" version was a different part number and a lot cheaper... But again, those were external, standalone units. Putting a 9000 part inside the card cage of an HP 3000 would probably be a different story; at least if you want to continue to keep the machine on an HP support contract... Given that we live or die by the Cat 5 wire now, having the supported part in the box is probably worth the price.... Also trying to end on a somewhat positive note: Getting 100BaseTX directly into the 3000 from our high-speed switching hubs will of course give us an order-of-magnitude bigger pipe into the box. Ken Sletten