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From: BRACKENRIDGE%USC-ISIB@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: How To Put Together A Cheap PC
Message-ID: <13917@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 22-Nov-83 17:11:00 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.13917
Posted: Tue Nov 22 17:11:00 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Nov-83 06:13:00 EST
Lines: 26

From:  Billy <BRACKENRIDGE@USC-ISIB>

I'd like to add to your message that USC/ISI has been doing exactly as
you have suggested on an institutional scale.

The key to this is to get IBM or your friendly Computerland to ship an
unassembled untested system.  In order to do this legally someone on
site must have taken the IBM service course.  I have never met the
man, but there is rumored to be such a graduate somewhere on campus so
we qualify.  We have found a 10% mortality rate on these untested
systems.  This is no problem as the systems are on warentee and we
just pile all the bad components in one system and ship it back to
IBM.

This allows a slight discount on top of the standard educational
discount.  We then buy disk drives 50 at a time and can beat the
discount houses here.  The one thing we can't seem to beat is AST I/O+
cards.  Buying them 15-25 at a time direct from AST still can't match
the singles prices from the discount suppliers.

Direct sales from IBM just haven't been worth the effort for orders
less than 50 machines.  After we have cleared the majority of the
campus paperwork we call up a list of retailers and ask them to bid
delivery time and price.  We can usually get same week delivery and
greater than 20% discount for up to 15 systems this way.  We have
never been able to get a system with no disk drives.