On Fri, 16 Sep 2005, Matt Bazan wrote: I don't know about you, but how many times have you wanted to know the price of hardware vendor a, vendor b and vendor c's product offering only to find out that you have to contact one of their sales reps, give them all your contact & company info (I'm sure you know the drill) listen to a sales spiel (or two, or three) maybe a webinar, or conference call or..etc. before finally getting a quote some time later? Only to then be bothered by endless follow up sales calls? I've resigned myself to it being one of the things I get paid to do. Wouldn't it be great if there was an online, updated daily, website that listed real quotes oraganized by region in the country and company size? No way that would ever happen. Companies especially in this market, thrive on making deals in a vacuum. Availability of that sort of imformation would force them to be slightly more competitive (and have slightly more integrity) I think so. Here's what I propose. I will design and host a web site to organize just such info. What I will need from all of you out there is your real time quotes (anonymously submitted is just fine, black out all the relevant personal/company info) and just include some general info on location (state for instance) and rough size of company. and all zero folks who aren't bound by disclosure restrictions could participate! The more effective and less time-consuming way to solve this problem is a discipline called "vendor management". matto --matt@snark.net------------------------------------------<darwin>< The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke