Hardware Maint. on Time&Materials?

["Bruce R. Miller" <MILLER@VAX.CAM.NIST.GOV>]

UGH! I'm coming under HEAVY pressure to minimize maintenance costs here!
I've managed to convince them that software maintenance is MANDITORY but
they keep hammering  me on  the hardware  maintenance.  (Symbolics  HAVE
dropped the rule  of `no  software maint.   w/o hardware  maint.' havent
they?)

What I'm being forced to consider  here is to maintain the  software but
handle hardware failures on a time&materials basis (not self repair).
If any of you have made this transition, I would like to know what
experiences you've had; in particular:

 1) Comparison of typical repair expenses to hardware maintenance contract cost.
    Especially; Whats a typical console repair cost?
 2) Typical (and non-typical) response time for a time&materials
    service call compared to an on-maintenance call?
 3) Any other problems to be aware of?

One point made was that for 3years maint on our 3670 we could by an
XL400.  They of course forget about the color, disks etc, and if I ask
`WOULD we buy an XL400?' the subject gets changed... oh well.
BTW; any news about 24bit (or 32bit) color on XL400?

Incidentally, in this case it doesn't even matter if Sun hardware
maintenance is cheeper; they're telling me that they handle sun hardware
repairs on t&m too.

how depressing...

Thanks;
  Bruce Miller
  miller@cam.nist.gov