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Procurement

Hardware / Software Procurement
So you can be sure that the hardware and software we specify is required (and not just to make us bigger profits), we will give you full part lists to enable you to purchase this yourself, using some of the largest UK suppliers* for the best price / service.

Should you want Cube to source the equipment for you, there is a small 5% administration fee. This is useful to reduce your purchasing overheads (less admin as you only need deal with one company - us) or buy via credit card only suppliers, if you don't have your own company credit card.

As an example of how we monitor the market for the best buys, at the end of 2002 we were recommending Fujitsu Siemens PC's to our customers. Why?

A lot of smaller organisations buy their PC's locally from suppliers that assemble their computers from different hardware suppliers. This hardware can range in quality, but could you tell? To cap this, they generally only give 1 years warranty and sometimes forget to add in the proper license for the operating system, meaning you may be using illegal software.

Fujitsu Seimens are one of the manufactures to still offer a 3 year on-site warranty as standard and include the Professional version of Windows XP. Below are shown 2 offers they had in December 2002.

Processor	Intel Pentium® 4 processor 2.0GHz
Memory	256MB DDRAM
Hard Disk	40GB (ATA-100) HDD
Audio	16bit audio on board
Media	3.5" FDD floppy drive 48x CDROM
Comms	on board (Intel) LAN and modem
Peripherals	Keyboard & wheel mouse included monitor not included (see below)
OS	Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Warranty	3 year onsite warranty as standard
Price :	£520 ex VAT
Processor	Intel® Celeron® processor 1.70GHz
Memory	256MB DDRAM
Hard Disk	40GB (ATA-100) HDD
Graphics	On board
Audio	16bit audio on board
Media	3.5" FDD floppy drive 48x CDROM
Comms	On board (Intel) LAN 10/100 and modem
Peripherals	Keyboard & wheel mouse included monitor not included (see below)
OS	Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Warranty	3 year onsite warranty as standard
Price	£433 ex VAT

17" Monitors with 3 years on-site warranty are available from £80 ex VAT or maybe you want to save valuable desk space with a TFT flat panel monitor!

Obviously this is just a "past" example. Post and packaging will also depend on supplier and quantities ordered. Call us if you would like a more up-to-date idea on anything from PC's to Servers, printers or other hardware or software and we would be pleased to give advice.

* E.g MicroWarehouse, Orchid UK, Dabs, etc