> Now if you write the words "mission critical" on it, suddenly the same 


Not really, I assume the hardware is of a much higher specification than 
some *really* cheap consumer version you could get for 20 quid.

> But hey, it's mission critical. What are you gonna do? You simply *have* 
> to have this thing, so basically you have to pay whatever they charge you. 
> Which is probably _why_ they charge you so much. ;-)

Usually you have the option of other suppliers, so the price should be 
pretty competitive for what you're getting. Otherwise they would go out of 
business if everyone else could sell the same product for half the price.

> I wasn't in any way involved in the purchase process, but I gather that we 
> were quoted tens of thousands of pounds by various parties, and we 
> eventually went with the lowest bidder.

If you were about to spend 10k on something, would you blindly take the 
cheapest one without even bothering to see exactly what you were getting? 
Sadly a lot of companies do exactly this, often with much larger sums of 
money...

Post a reply to this message