Accounting packages

[Brian Kelsay]

Well, I just got done building a bunch (50) of the type of box you are
wanting to use for this application.   I learned one very important thing
(maybe I already knew it), you can build it yourself for 1/4 to 1/2 the cost
from a major vendor and have 2x the performance as well as knowing that you
used quality parts.  This all depends on if you want to thoroughly check out
the hardware specs before you buy some stuff.

My company bought some HP 2U rack servers for $5000 each.  They bought two
or three for evaluation and then told my dept. to spec out a similar or
better server for comparison.  The HP has a single processor, 64 MB, one
SCSI hot-swap drive (capable of 2 drives), a proprietary NIC and not much
else.  My low-end server has a single processor, but the board is capable of
dual processor, base of 256 MB (capable of 4GB), standard Intel NIC onboard,
and one hotswap SCSI (capable of 4 drives with RAID).  We can offer that up
to the company for $2500-2700.  That's why we built them ourselves and got
what we want in each box.

If you know what you are doing you can come up with a better answer than
Compaq's $10,000 proprietary piece of you know what.

Oh, and your old software may still do the job you want it to do, unless you
need to upgrade to still get support from the vendor.

Again, my .02,
Brian Kelsay

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bradley Miller [mailto:bradmiller at dslonramp.com]
> Sent: Friday, March 30, 2001 2:18 PM
> To: kclug at kclug.org
> Subject: Accounting packages
> 
> 
> We're looking for a new accounting system for our main 
> company.  Right now
> they're using TechGAP software.  Unfortunately the SCO Unix 
> box is dying a
> slow, painful death (P166 new in 1996) and the vendor is 
> wanting to rake us
> over the coals.  Does $10K for a Compaq sound right?   What 
> about $20-25K
> for an accounting package?
> 
> We're interested in any *nix systems that are fairly 
> industrial strength.
> We need shipping, accounting, billing, etc...  and web 
> reporting would be
> great.
> 
> -- Bradley Miller