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Q.I was disappointed to see Jeff
Vance's recent posting on HP3000-L
that leasing was no longer an option for
small developers purchasing
the 918DX. Rental is now the only other
option to outright purchasing.
Renting equipment that you intend on
keeping for a substantial
period of time, unfortunately, is a
mistake. Generally, payments
are such that you pay something on the
order of 10 percent per
month for the product, thus you essentially
"purchase" the system
in less than a year, although you acquire
absolutely no equity
ownership in the process. Once you stop
paying rent, you must
turn the machine back to HP.
Leasing, when put together as a true
lease, is a much better
deal for a small startup company than
outright purchase -- but
purchase itself is a far better arrangement
than renting, especially
if the goal is long-term product
development.
I understand that FRD, HP's division
that handles leasing
arrangements, has a minimum $20,000
equipment price tag before
they will consider a lease. The 918DX, of
course, falls substantially
short of that minimum price and thus
leasing agreements seem impossible.
I can, however, imagine several scenarios
that would allow leasing
arrangements to be possible, if CSY wished
to participate. And
Wirt goes on to define what some of those
scenarios are.
Ken Sletten added that Wirt did an
excellent job of pointing
our some of the problems with leasing a
918DX. I would just like
to add that unless this changes, as a
practical matter small developers
are pretty much left with just the
"buy" option.
Remember: Purchase of a 918DX costs
$7,077. Renting costs
$375/month for one year or $450/month for
six months. So renting
a 918DX for one year costs 64 percent of
the purchase price. Since
at the end of a rental period you have to
give the machine back,
I would think that not many if any serious
developers will rent
it. But let me add that $7,077 for the
918DX with all the HP and
third-party software that it includes is a
great deal
Roy Breslawski: We do have to
realize that an awful lot of partners
kicked in a lot of product onto
this box that we build, and $7,077
is a great deal for it.
Unfortunately, we can’t do everything
for every single person out there.
We have to put something together
that we think can put a lot of
developer bundles into a lot of
small developers’ hands.
Contrary to rumor floating around in
some quarters, 918DXs have been
shipped to developers. There are
some out there, and they will
continue going out.
We can explore some other
alternatives. One suggestion, in particular
came out was maybe getting our
distributors involved in this in
the US, similar to the way
it’s done in Europe. Although I might
add that in Europe it is at a
higher price because of the miscellaneous
costs. We’ll look into that,
but I’m not going to be able to promise
anything significant at that point
right now. If there are things
that we can change that will make
it better without just creating
an entire new program, we could
look into that. But realistically
we need to move forward too,
instead of just tweaking the program.
Realistically, there’s other
things that we think are more important.
If there are some other
constructive ideas, we’re open to it.
I think in the same timeframe that
these questions were posted,
there was a lot information put on
3000-L about who the contact
person is and how to get
information to us. I want to encourage
you to take advantage of that, but
for the moment the program
as it stands is what will be going
forward.
Joe Geiser: Actually, you can
lease a 918DX. The fact of the
matter is that in its current
configuration, seven thousand and
some odd dollars it’s
inadequate for developer’s box with a 64
Mb memory base. You need at least
128 Mb with 5.5 and doing the
proper development that you need to
do, especially if you’re working
on client server Web-enabled
applications with multiple listeners
running.
What I also found is that
with the 918DX as quoted, the support
costs are twice the costs of the
machine itself. You’re also bundled
with a lot of compilers that you
may not need, for example, RPG.
I don’t need it. I would be
very happy to get rid of RPG. I’d
be happy to get rid of Pascal.
I’d like to keep C. I’d like to
keep COBOL. Get rid of the rest of
it, not have to pay the support
costs on it.
Also, from the lease, the
only way you can really get it over
$20,000 is to take three-year lease
option. So you can lease a
918DX. The fact of the matter is
that’s out of the reach of most
of us. That’s why I had to do
the Channel Rent option as well.
The other thing is from a financing
standpoint, HP's very happy
to go with Channel Rent with me at
almost $1,000 a month because
I did kick up a memory and kicked
up the disk. It won’t go $1,200
with me per lease without
absolutely checking my books. It seems
that for a measly $200 a month I
have to go through all that red
tape.
I think there’s first
of all some support issues that need to
be addressed. The support area was
late in coming in. We need
to be able to pick and choose which
compilers we need. If we don’t
need RPG we should be able to drop
RPG and not have to pay for
it, but from what I understand, I
have to keep RPG. I have to
pay support on it. And if
that’s not the case I’d like to know.
Gary Biggs: Basically, I got a
fully loaded 918DX, except for
the memory which was just too darn
expensive. I did not delete
the licenses for the compilers, but
we did delete all of the support,
so what happened today was I got 12
boxes of manuals. They say
that it takes up over 20 linear
feet in my office.
We bought the 918DX. It
came in at about $9,000. We bought the
support and bundled that into a
three-year lease and the payments
are in the $870 range. So, there is
some flexibility there in
the program to do some of that, so
I think there is a lot of misinformation
around there. I was certainly able
to configure this and get financing
on it at what was more attractive
than I got it for my bank.
Joe Geiser: As I said, 64 Mb
memory, four gigabyte disk is not
adequate for this development
machine. If you’re going to do some
serious development in order to get
it to a serious development
level it brings it up in price
quite a bit. I want to make sure
you know early on the support area
was the problem, and from what
I understand, it still is. The
support is twice the cost of the
box. I can drop that that’s
great I’m going to, but I don’t want
to have to buy it if I don’t
need it. Can we drop support for
compilers we don’t need?
HP’s Adrian den Hartog:
I’ve taken over the program from Steve
Little. This is the first time
we’ve put something like this together
and are some problems that
we’re working through. There is a lot
of confusion at the moment that
we’re looking to clear up, and
I am talking to support to see if
we can do a la carte on some
of the options.
At the moment as it stands
the way we’ve been told is that when
you order support on the main
product what’s going to happen is
that automatically it’s going
to put support on the main the products
that are bundled. So I think what
has happened is that if you
do not order support on the main
product, but on the individual
software that you want support on,
then that will work.
Cortlandt Wilson: I was involved in
the initial advocacy for the
918DX program line when Alfredo
Rego and Wirt Atmar were the main
ones involved. In fact, at one
point Alfredo offered to create
his own lease program, so maybe
we’re going to have to go back
and take him up on that. He was
ready to put up over $100,000
in a bank account at least create a
few leases.
What disturbs me about this
is that we were working together
with HP, and I had a very positive
feeling. I’m a little distressed
that the program has changed and I
wasn’t contacted. as far as
I know, none of the people were
working with you before were contacted
on the changes. It seemed like we
had a great relationship, and
that stopped. How can we have
advocacy that isn’t a stop-start
thing and continues to work over
time.
Roy Breslawski: I think that is the
key right there. Adrian is
responsible for the program now,
and he is the person you should
work with. We are executing on that
program.
Adrian den Hartog: I’ve
actually had the opportunity to sit down
with Jennie Hou, and she will have
information on some of the
things that I’ve discussed
with her today as to what we think
the criteria are for getting the
918DX. So she’ll be there to
represent us.
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