Seeking advice on a Bid/Quote to a client
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@Minion-Queen said:
Did you pad your hours by at least 20% clients that have environments like this will have MANY other things to cause some scope creep as well as the "gotchayas".
That is why the quote seems hour heavy as @Hubtech mentioned.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Those Home & Business key cards are a pain to administer these days. I wouldn't fancy doing 30.
I completely agree, but based on the past discussion I had with the owner, I do not expect him to see the benefit of offic365.
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Are you sure Office Key cards are transferable? I could have sworn they weren't.
And I'll echo the rest, administering them is a major pain. You have to associate them with a MS account, Microsoft says you're limited to 5 per account, but I've seen 10 in a single account, so this would leave you with having 3 different logons to manage them. Additionally - there is no way to tell what key is associated with what machine when you have to reinstall. If you go this route, explain to the client that you will anticipate at least 1 additional hour whenever a machine is built just to deal with re-licensing Office (in most cases this won't be far from the truth).
I understand it's a lot more money, but I'd suggest an Open Volume License version or Office 365. I would not even pitch the key cards - clients will almost always take the cheapest way out
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Pretty sure they weren't transferable when they first came out but after a massive hoo-ha Microsoft backed down and changed their policy.
Not being able to tell what key is associated with what machine is a massive issue for me. I'm sure there's a way of handling this with a bit of organisation, but I've got into a bit of a mess recently.
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When you log into the MS site to re-associate the license, there are no numbers listed. It simply has a list of how ever many licenses you have associated with an activation button next to each one.
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That is correct.
However, I think it lists them in reverse chronological order of when you registered them. So providing you keep a list of what you registered and when and on what PC you installed it on, you should be ok (I wasn't that organised). Alternatively, you could register a separate Microsoft account for each card, as I don't think there are any limits on the number of Microsoft accounts you can hold. You could then associate a PC with a specific MS account.
It's all a right ball-ache though, isn't it?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
That is correct.
However, I think it lists them in reverse chronological order of when you registered them. So providing you keep a list of what you registered and when and on what PC you installed it on, you should be ok (I wasn't that organised). Alternatively, you could register a separate Microsoft account for each card, as I don't think there are any limits on the number of Microsoft accounts you can hold. You could then associate a PC with a specific MS account.
It's all a right ball-ache though, isn't it?
Thanks for the picture - I didn't have ready access to the logon credentials or the URL.
Yeah - that is a huge pain in the ass. I guess the OP could add an extra hour of billing to managing the documentation of that list during original setup.
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@Dashrender said:
I understand it's a lot more money, but I'd suggest an Open Volume License version or Office 365. I would not even pitch the key cards - clients will almost always take the cheapest way out
The client has always purchased key cards and knows the cost. So it is less pitching to the client than showing them the options compared to what they will do without me. I did leave off the regular VLSC price. Just talked to the vendor and that is 341 for Office Standard. So $10k.
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@JaredBusch said:
I have a potential client needing to upgrade from SBS 2003.
Here is the hardware and then our proposed labor hours. I have not worked one of these up by myself before for a client I have little experience with.
The CAL's seem a little high. I think I paid a few dollars less using Open Business for my licensing. Have you checked into that?
Also, what kind of battery backup are you going to be using for this new setup?
And why WD Greens? I know the enterprise drives are a little more expensive but the performance gain IMHO is worth it when putting them into a Synology NAS.
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@Bill-Kindle said:
@JaredBusch said:
I have a potential client needing to upgrade from SBS 2003.
Here is the hardware and then our proposed labor hours. I have not worked one of these up by myself before for a client I have little experience with.
The CAL's seem a little high. I think I paid a few dollars less using Open Business for my licensing. Have you checked into that?
Also, what kind of battery backup are you going to be using for this new setup?
And why WD Greens? I know the enterprise drives are a little more expensive but the performance gain IMHO is worth it when putting them into a Synology NAS.
yes I completely forgot that I was going to mention this - your putting Green drives in a NAS? That's definitely not recommended. You should look at Red drives at least if not Enterprise Near-SAS drives.
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@JaredBusch said:
@Dashrender said:
I understand it's a lot more money, but I'd suggest an Open Volume License version or Office 365. I would not even pitch the key cards - clients will almost always take the cheapest way out
The client has always purchased key cards and knows the cost. So it is less pitching to the client than showing them the options compared to what they will do without me. I did leave off the regular VLSC price. Just talked to the vendor and that is 341 for Office Standard. So $10k.
What version of Office are they moving from? 2003? If that's the case that shows they get a good long life out of those licenses, I'd definitely go with the OV instead because you will more than likely have to deal with reinstalls, and the value spread over 8+ years (yeah I know 2003 came out 11 years ago) the cost is pretty darned low.
If they have 2007 or newer, why are you upgrading?
FYI, OV will also give you training credits (rather the company) that they can use to train users how to use Office better. Plus you can also use a KMS server to handle licensing, and you get the rights to use use on a desktop and a laptop, and the users also get the ability to purchase office from MS direct for $10/ea (This might be version dependant).
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@Bill-Kindle said:
And why WD Greens? I know the enterprise drives are a little more expensive but the performance gain IMHO is worth it when putting them into a Synology NAS.
I would very rarely go to enterprise drives, but I would likely go to Red drives. They are the same as Green but the firmware is changed to work better in RAID arrays. Generally the price is within a few dollars. In a solution of this size, the cost difference would be like .001%, I would just do it.
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@Dashrender said:
yes I completely forgot that I was going to mention this - your putting Green drives in a NAS? That's definitely not recommended. You should look at Red drives at least if not Enterprise Near-SAS drives.
It's not horrible, before there were Red drives we used Green in this way and they worked fine. If there is a significant cost difference and you use RAID 1 or RAID 10, Green is perfectly fine. But if the price is close, just opt for Red today, IMHO.
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@scottalanmiller The 2TB drives I got were about $180 a piece, but they are quiet, and I get good performance out of them. At the time I was purchasing, the Reds were a little more expensive.
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Just checked Amazon quickly:
WD Green 2TB: $80
WD Red 2TB: $100Might be worth staying Green. That's a 25% increase.
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@Minion-Queen said:
Did you pad your hours by at least 20% clients that have environments like this will have MANY other things to cause some scope creep as well as the "gotchayas".
Last major quote I did, I took what I though it would take me and doubled that number. Just told that customer that this particular part of the quote would be seperate and subject to change, which it did, and turned out to be half of the quote because I over-padded
They were happy as they thought they got a helluva deal, I was happy because I was able to do the work in less time than I had planned and still got paid well.
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@Bill-Kindle said:
I was happy because I was able to do the work in less time than I had planned
There should be a special word to describe the warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you finish an IT project in less time than you predicted. I just wish I felt it more often.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@Bill-Kindle said:
I was happy because I was able to do the work in less time than I had planned
There should be a special word to describe the warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you finish an IT project in less time than you predicted. I just wish I felt it more often.
There probably is but it is likely a German word that we can't pronounce.
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Something similar to "Schadenfreude"
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@scottalanmiller said:
Something similar to "Schadenfreude"
But it wasn't their misfortune, they still paid way less than I could have charged and they let me get some experience I hadn't gotten yet. It benefited both parties.
