[SAGE] to buy or not to buy service contracts

[Jenn Sturm <jsturm@hamilton.edu>]

I've always bought service contracts for expensive equipment, but we're 
in a strange situation here where it's just not clear if that's the 
right path to take. We were offered a 32-processor SGI Origin 2000 for 
$100K, with a $50K service contract. The machine is remarketed, which 
I'm reluctant to go with, but it will perfectly fit a hole in our line 
up of machines and enable us increase our resources on the cheap (we 
already have a cluster--the Origin 2000 will serve a different need).

If we purchase the service contract, it's possible that we might not be 
able to get all the funds together for the machine (we need to buy a 
big A/C for it as well as renovate a room, so it's getting expensive 
for a "cheap" machine). If, on the other hand, we don't purchase the 
service contract, and instead leave part of that money lying around for 
repairs, should they be needed, we leave ourselves open to the 
possibility of having a big pile of junk we couldn't afford to fix were 
there to be a catastrophic failure.

How does your shop run things? Do you buy the big service contracts? Or 
do you take the gamble and keep reserve funds around?


-Jenn


___________
Jennifer Sturm
System Administrator and Research Support Specialist
Chemistry Department
Hamilton College
198 College Hill Road
Clinton, NY 13323

tel: 315-859-4745
fax: 315-859-4744

jsturm@hamilton.edu

http://www.chem.hamilton.edu/
http://mars.chem.hamilton.edu/