An RM story... We went RM big style here (before I arrived - justify, justify). We get 'support' (!) from county. If I ring RM, they say 'erm, no, you're in Herts, we cannot help you'. So I ring Herts (well I've rung them twice in two years). Hmm. A managed service from RM is a _lot_ of money. I listened to them at BETT, and they were talking �10,000 to �18,000 - but that was for a fully managed service. I don't know exactly what you get for that, but I'd want to be a damn happy ICT co-ordinator _all_ year round. RM value?... �99 for a Community Connect licence. *choke* Of course, almost the same again for Office and Publisher licences. *choke* Per box. *choke* I'm not going to go into the 'super value' that is 'WindowBox'. Luckily, we _didn't_ go that way before I arrived. Check out the cost of that stuff. Unbelievable. And, RM assure me that we need it, and tried to make me justify how we covered the curriculum without it - in a meeting, in front of my boss! Not very proffesional now was it. I replied by asking them to justify us spending our money on it, as it was them who wanted our money, not us who wanted there product. Waffle waffle. We said "No, thanks". The community connect licence includes a client access licence for NT, but an NT client access licence isn't anything like �99 for education (is it �11? I think). Putting in 20 boxes? You do the maths on the licences - then, erm, *choke*. Have RM heard of educational rates? Even if folks insist on Windows for a desktop (with a linux file server), then you can grab a Windows 98 licence from your LEA (probably) for maybe �30? (I think? check it out), and put StarOffice 6 on in a month or so (when it comes out) for �150 _site_ licence. Now that sort of money, is at least 'reasonable' on �500 of hardware. At least the proportions (software:hardware) are not completely insane. --- Incidently, the RM stand at BETT mentioned that one of the _big_ advantages of going to XP with there new Connect 3, was the much more reasonable log on times. I pointed out that that clearly implied that the current system they've been selling has unreasonable log on times. "Well," the man explained, "sometimes logons could be slow under certain conditions." I pointed out that those certain conditions were, erm, "the use of, erm, 'TOPICS'!" He half smiled, and nodded. I continued, "We did away with topics two years ago, and we have had 'reasonable' logons ever since." So what other benefits would it give? We never really got round to that. I'm not anti-RM. The hardware is reliable, and at a reasonable cost. The boxes turn up on time, and it's good kit. But, I don't feel I need to say more about what to avoid. -- Matt __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Try FREE Yahoo! Mail - the world's greatest free email! http://mail.yahoo.com/