Novels2Search

Chapter 28: Horse Trading 101

Dan was at his desk the next day shortly before 9:00 a.m., after having made several copies of his new program proposal and leaving the original with the receptionist to give to Marvin as soon as he arrived. At 9:10 a.m. Marvin called him and asked him to go meet in his office.

When Dan arrived a minute later, Marvin was all smiles. “This is terrific,” he told Dan, holding up the program proposal paperwork. “I’ll drop it off to Taisha and have her draft a cover letter and send it to State Ed this morning after I Fax a copy to the Melameds. You’ve outdone yourself, Dan. You really have.”

“Glad you approve, Marvin. I hope the Melameds are as enthusiastic as you are.”

“Oh, they’ll be over the moon. I guarantee it.”

“So, how would you rate the chances of their approving the new lab before SED approves the proposal if everything goes well today?”

“Well, predicting that is a bit tricky—they will want the assurance of the program approval first, but if today’s meeting goes well and if there really is no significant cost involved in the computer swap, I think there’s a reasonably good chance they will go for it. I promise I’ll push for it if they are on the fence as a new lab would be a selling point as far as overall recruitment, too with or without the new program. But I can’t promise anything.”

“I know, Marvin. And I appreciate your support. I really do.”

“Hey, this proposal is one that’s easy to get behind from where I sit. Still, don’t get your hopes up too high,” Marvin said as his phone rang. “Yes, Taisha? Ah, good, send him in,” Marvin said, hanging up the phone and turning to Dan, “Upinder is here from corporate. He’s early. Good. We can chat before the vendor arrives.”

A moment later, a short, handsome, dark-skinned young man of perhaps 30 years of age knocked on the doorframe of the open door. “Come in, come in,” Marvin motioned. “Dean Amor, this is Upinder Kapoor, PEMTI’s Director of Information Technology. Upinder, this is Dan Amor, our resident boy genius.”

“Nice to meet you, Dan,” Upinder said, extending his hand which Dan shook, responding, “Likewise.”

Marvin motioned for both men to take a seat across from his desk, which they did. He then poured coffee for the three of them, pouring milk and two spoons of sugar in Upinder’s, milk in his own and leaving Dan’s black. “So, what do you think of the proposal for the no-cost new lab?” Marvin asked as he put the coffee before the men.

“I’ll reserve judgment until I see the sample PC clone, but it looks good on paper at least. I understand you need the PCs for the new software needed for the short course Dan is developing. What about the software licensing costs? Do you have figures on that?” Upinder asked, stirring his coffee and taking a sip as he looked to Dan.

“There won’t be any cost involved for the application software. Our publishers will provide student versions bundled with the workbooks at no cost. We will need a license or actual copies of MS-DOS or PC-DOS, though, something I’ll need to discuss with this or other vendors—unless you have a better idea.” Dan said.

“We don’t have licenses at this point,” Upinder replied. “But OEM copies should not be difficult to get with the systems, and we can make whatever copies we need after that for the students to use as boot disks as long as we have 20 genuine copies or a license. That should be a nominal cost, think.”

“That sounds good,” Dan said. “That would be the only additional cost involved and I was hoping it would not be an issue. I’ll bring it up with the vendor if you approve the system after you’ve had a chance to examine the sample he is bringing.” The phone rang again just as Dan finished speaking.

“Yes Taisha,” Marvin said. “Oh good, tell him to sit tight for a minute and we’ll be out to get him. Tell him I’m at a meeting but will be with him shortly. Thanks.” Then, turning to Dan and Upinder he said, “The vendor is here. Anything else we need to discuss before we see him?”

“I’m good,” said Upinder with Dan echoing the same.

“Let’s go then,” Marvin said, and the three men walked out of the office and on to the reception area.

Marvin walked towards a young man sitting in the reception area next to a handcart with two large boxes on it. “I’m Marvin Lantz, the school Director. This is Dean Dan Amor, and the gentleman next to him is Upinder Kapoor, the PEMTI Director of Information Technology.”

“I’m Joe Zapata,” the young man replied, shaking hands with the three men. “I’ve got a sample PC clone here per my discussions with Dean Amor last week. “Where would you like me to set up?”

“Follow us,” Marvin said. We’ll take you to the computer lab we’re considering replacing.” He then led the men to the classroom area of the school on this floor where the first of the two Apple IIe labs was located, with Joe following closely behind him, pushing his hand truck with the boxes ahead of him. Classes were in session, but the lab would not be in use until after 1:00 p.m., so they had plenty of time for the demo.”

“I’ll catch up with you in a moment. I need to grab the books and software,” Dan said, heading in the direction of his office, where he grabbed the three workbooks with the student copies of the application software, then joined them in the lab.

Joe quickly unboxed the monitor—a 12-inch monochrome monitor with an unknown brand name in front. He then unboxed the computer which was housed in a generic putty-colored metal case. He connected the power cord to the computer case and the keyboard after retrieving these from the box, wrapped in bubble wrap. Dan noticed there was no name of any kind on the computer case or keyboard—cheap generics, but the keyboard had a solid feel, and the keys gave a nice response when pressed with a decent amount of travel on the keys and tactile feedback—he had feared and half expected a cheap chiclet-type keyboard with nominal response, but that was not the case. No one would confuse the keyboard with the one from the genuine IBM-PC which had an indestructible, tank-like feel and impressive (and noisy) auditory and tactile feedback when in use, but that was to be expected. As Joe was about to put the monitor above the computer case in the usual configuration, Upinder asked him to wait while he took out a leather tool kit from his pocket and withdrew a Phillips-head screwdriver to open the computer case in order to take a look inside. He removed the five screws from the back of the case and slipped out the top of the case by pushing it backwards about two inches and then removing the lid, setting it aside. Dan lifted it momentarily and noted it was made from heavy gauge steel—a good sign. Inside the computer case they could see a motherboard with an Intel 8088 chipset, a standard power supply, two half-height, double-density 5.25” floppy disk drives and room for memory expansion. There was also a generic, no-name monochrome video card. No surprises there either. There would be ample room for future expansion with four empty expansion bays and two empty RAM slots as well. The installed memory was 256K as promised—more than enough to run the software of the time—especially the student versions. Upinder was doubtless also looking for signs of used parts, which were not in evidence—everything looked and smelled brand new. He reassembled the case, then took it upon himself to connect the monitor to the graphics card in the back and plugged it into the power strip.

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“Do you have a copy of MS-DOS with you?” he asked Joe, who produced one from his blazer’s left pocket. With that, Upinder inserted the floppy into the first drive, closed the latch to engage the read/write heads and turned the computer on. Next, he turned on the monitor, which glowed a faint amber color. Dan preferred amber displays to the more common green ones, though it did not make any practical difference. Upinder and Dan both noticed a button to the left of the drives marked “Turbo” which Upinder left alone for the moment. When the computer booted a moment later, he pressed the return key twice, not bothering to set the correct date and time. and typed “Dir” at the flashing A:\> prompt and let the screen scroll. He then pressed the turbo button, hit the F3 key on the keyboard which brought up the last command “DIR” on the screen, and pressed the “return” key. The directory listing of the various files on the diskette raced at twice the normal speed. Good, it was a turbo unit as promised.

“It’s overclocked to run at 8 MHz” Joe said. That was nearly twice the speed of the original IBM-PC’s 4.77 MHz. It would make it twice as fast at calculating large spreadsheets, outputting data from large databases or running the normally painfully slow print preview mode to preview what text would actually look like when printed in WordStar or WordPerfect.

“Everything looks good,” Upinder said smiling. “Will you include MS-DOS with each system?”

“Not on an even swap, but I can provide it at $40 per computer in a lot of 20.”

“What if we included the original boot disks for the Apple IIe computers. What would the price be then?” Dan asked.

Joe thought for a moment and took a look around at the Apple IIe computers in the lab. Then he replied, “Well, if you have the original disks, I can cut the cost of the DOS to $20 per computer. I have a licensing agreement for OEM distribution of PC-DOS that technically I am only supposed to supply with genuine IBM-PCs, but I can include it at my cost of $20 per unit. Let me take a look at the Apple computers while you evaluate the PC, if that all right?”

“Sure,” said Marvin. “Help yourself.”

Meantime Dan showed Upinder the book and software bundles and pulled out the first, WordPerfect, and handed it to him. Upinder took it, loaded it, and played with it for a few minutes, then removed it and went through the same process with the other software. “These look good,” he said smiling. “The PC would have to be configured to print with the printer you have here,” he said, pointing to a Panasonic dot matrix next to the first computer on the first row. “But that’s something your tech can do.”

“Yeah, and I can do that too. We just need to load the driver onto the Boot disk, something we can do for all of the copies of DOS we’ll make, leaving the originals in a safe place.” Dan said, then added, “It would be nice if we could get the lab configured as a network so that every computer could print to the printer instead of having students have to take their software and data disks to the one computer in the front of the room when they need to print anything as part of an assignment.” Dan said.

“One miracle at a time, Dan,” Marvin said while Upinder simply smiled and shook his head. That was not going to happen any time soon—but he’d fight one battle at a time.

Shortly after Upinder had tested all of the software to his satisfaction, Joe also finished his quick evaluation of the 20 Apples in the room and came back to join them.

“Well, what do you think,” he asked Dan, who responded, “It’s not up to me, but I’d certainly be happy with a full swap if corporate will pay for the $400 PC-DOS disks we will also need.

“I think that’s probably doable,” Upinder said. It seems a very reasonable cost for a new lab.” Then, turning to Joe he asked, “What about warranties and support on these after the swap?”

“Like I told your dean, I’ll give you a one-year warranty on parts. If you need me to install or diagnose any issues, I’m willing to do that but at my normal reasonable charge of $50 an hour plus travel expenses of $.50 per mile for any in-house service.”

“Can you throw in free labor for the year?” Marvin asked.

“No. I’m giving you these at my cost knowing I can sell the Apples for a reasonable profit. But I can’t do free labor too. If you want, I can provide free parts and labor for a year for an additional $70 per computer.”

“No, that won’t fly. How long would you take to deliver parts if needed?”

“Look, I’ll send them to you the day of the request with you sending me the bad part in return when you receive the new part and swap it out and will ship by your choice of carrier at my actual cost, with no additional handling charges. That’s the best I can do.” Joe answered.

“My experience is that if a PC is going to fail it will do so within 48 hours of being plugged in. If they pass a 48-hour burn-in test, chances are they will continue to work for many years without issues. Can you give us, say, a parts warranty for one year and parts and labor in house for three days from the date of delivery? In the rare case any of them fail the test?” Dan asked, knowing he was pushing the envelope.

“Tell you what. If you guys agree to do the deal today, I’m willing to do that. But if not, then no. And the even swap with $20 for DOS offer expires today too. Like I said, I’m not making much money on this deal, but happen to have a client interested in a quantity of refurbished Apple II systems for another school.”

Upinder frowned at this. But he said, “Let me call my CEO and see if he’ll agree to the terms. Can you give me ten minutes?”

“Sure—take twenty if you need it, but I need to know before I have to leave for a service call within a half hour.”

“Dan, stay here with Joe and I’ll take Upinder to my office to make the call,” Marvin said.

“Take my key—my office is closer,” Dan replied, giving Marvin his key ring, holding it by the tip of his office key.”

“We’ll be back shortly,” Marvin said as he walked out of the lab with Upinder.

When the men were gone, Dan turned to Joe and asked, “Out of curiosity, what would these units cost with a 10MB hard disk and a single floppy drive?”

“Normally I sell thee exactly as configured here for $550 each plus shipping and handling. The hard disk is an additional $200. But I can get them to you for $150 if that’s an upgrade you’d like.”

“Like, yes. Can sell to my boss? No. What if my faculty wanted to buy computers for their own use? Would you be willing to give them a discount?”

Joe looked at Dan and smiled. “You’re nothing if not persistent. I can sell units just like this one in quantities of at least five for $450—delivery is extra, but they can pick them up with no extra cost, other than sales tax, from my office across the river. That offer is good for the rest of the month, but only if we close this deal today.”

“That’s good to know, Joe. Thank you. I’ll let my faculty know and they can contact you if we can reach an agreement today.”

Ten minutes later, Marvin and Upinder returned, all smiles. “I got my boss to agree,” Upinder said. It was not easy, but I told them it was a good deal that we could not match elsewhere and, after a bit of convincing, he agreed. We can sign an agreement today for delivery at your convenience. Just bill PEMTI for the $400 for the DOS, or you can have cash on delivery, whichever you prefer.”

“All right, said Joe,” as Dan sighed in relief. Let’s draw up the agreement and I can deliver by the end of the week and take away the 20 Apple IIe’s. If you like, I can leave this PC here and take one Apple IIe with me now.”

“That would be fine, Joe,” said Marvin. “Let’s go to my office and we’ll draw up a purchase order we can both sign. Meantime, take whichever of these computers suits you and we’ll get you an original boot disk to go with it.”

With that, they all left, and Dan was left behind smiling broadly. He’d done it. Now he’d better get the program approval, or he knew there would be hell to pay despite the fact they would get a brand new lab of better computers at basically no cost since, as he well knew, no good deed goes unpunished.