Hardware Maint. on Time&Materials?

[barmar@THINK.COM]

We haven't done an analysis of the comparative costs, but my subjective
feeling is that you can do pretty well on T&M if you don't insist on very
timely response time.  The problem is that you are charged a minimum of two
hours per call.  If you have two one-hour calls on successive days you'll
be charged for four hours.  However, if you wait for the second problem
before placing the service call then you'll have one two-hour call and
that's all you'll be charged for.  That's about $300 for letting a machine
sit idle for an extra couple of days.

Also, if you do the simple things yourself your maintenance bill won't run
too high.  For instance, Symbolics assumes that their service people will
do simple console adjustments or reinstall machines when they're moved.  We
didn't call Symbolics when we moved memory from one machine to another, or
swapped consoles, etc.  All these things are covered in a maintenance
contract, but I doublt most large customers bother having Symbolics do this
for them, since it's too inconvenient placing the call, waiting for the CE,
etc.