L&S computer configurations on The Scholar’s Workstation site
For several years now, I’ve coordinated a bulk purchase of computers for L&S units. The idea of the bulk purchase is to save us the time we spend configuring identical or nearly-identical computers one at a time, and the extra 10-20% more we spend for those computers than we would if we bought them all together. Purchasing in bulk just makes sense.
However, coordinating the bulk purchases has been challenging. The vendors give me pretty tight timelines, so there’s not much opportunity to publicize the deal before the deadline for the discount expires. I always get requests from managers the day after the deal expires. And the rest of the year, managers have to decide whether to buy a computer when they need one, or wait for the bulk purchase to save a little money.
So this year, I’m trying something new. In collaboration with The Scholar’s Workstation, I’ve managed to get a web page for L&S computer recommendations placed on the TSW web site. This page will include Dell desktops, and Apple desktops and notebooks, with discounted pricing and our configuration recommendations. I plan to add Windows laptop configurations as well. We will keep the page current, so you’ll be able to get our recommendation and pricing any time during the year, not just during a two-week period in September.
I think this will work a lot better for L&S than the bulk purchase program did; the challenge will be keeping up with the changes in products and technology.
