Martin_Ebuyer

We're now stocking most of the range at fair prices, so it might be worth checking out some of the ready installed XP ones. However, they're installed with XP home rather than pro, probably with a view that if a school or college were too have them onsite, they'd use their existing site licensing. I might also add that I had a rep at our offices showing their sub £200 mini laptop offering to me the other day which was based on 2Gb solid state storage running both XP & MS Office without too much trouble. In fact, I was suprised how fast it was, possibly due to the lack of other software on it being a factor. Dell are also offering their slant on this market now, along with Acer shortly, HP and a few others so hopefully Asus will stop being a bit reclusive about their stock and make it easier for everyone to get hold of one.

It seems such a shame that Ebuyer and other resellers try their hardest to be competitive but they're blocked out by such rules. Even more so when we are able to bid for items and add additional discounts in some situations. I know that consortiums, preferred suppliers and other collectives are supposed to save you money, but all it seems to do often is give a select few people the opportunity to fix prices with no additional effort required to retain their customer. Surely the simpler option is to email your usual suppliers at the same time and ask them to quote for you.

I'd urge anyone to read the T&Cs very carefully on cashbacks because there are 2 clauses which some people miss and it's pretty costly if you've missed it. Firstly, the quantity you can have of whatever it is you're claiming cashback on because there's usually a limit of around 50 units. Additionally, get the claim in as soon as possible, because most of the time they only honour it for 30 days, if you miss the cut off, you'll struggle to get your cheque. It's not nice as an account manager to have to deal with an upset customer when there's nothing we can do if HP won't pay out. If you can't find the cashback form, get in touch with the supplier, they should be able to dig one out for you.

Infocus have now also started offering a bulb warranty, probably to catch up with the Epson and Hitachi models.

As the majority of my work is education and public sector based, we started getting invitations to tender at various times when the team first started out. It's only now that I've the confidence, time, contacts and tools to really get stuck into these and I'm glad I've finally submitted a hefty quote for a college I have on my accounts. Some tenders are pretty awful to wade through though, and perhaps some of the more competitive suppliers just don't have the time to inspect a mammoth document and fullfill every whim or desire on it. The one big advantage a buyer has with this is that I can submit the specs out the parts to all the major brands and get them to bid it down. We also encourage the buyer to take the time to get someone to show you a product if you're rolling out on a big scale. There's nothing worse than tendering for something only to change your mind halfway through and have to start again. Worse still, you can take delivery and find it's just not what you wanted. Ask them for evaluations, demos, most suppliers should be happy to let either show off their products or arrange an evaluation, especially if it's a cutting edge solution they're wanting to show off. Wherever possible, most specifications can be met but don't be suprised if you're asked why because some weird and wonderful specifications turn up in quotes and it just completely baffles account managers who just don't know or understand why you'd need some things. Possible disadvantages are that due to having to price a quote up for maybe a month or two in advance, you might find yourself paying more due to how volatile pricing can be, especially if the product suddenly drops in price or a competitor brand decides to go head to head with a similar product you've asked to have quotes on.