so the total including labor and an operating system is $494 with drives and shipping extra?

>From: brandon@blanu.net

>To: Robert Sullivan

>Subject: Re: Bid on Computers

>Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 15:18:13 -0600

> > Just so I am clear, the $304 is the total cost of having a working

> > compter, with linex, in our house, i.e. includes all shipping and

> > assembly costs.

> > and what is the one time cost of the disk drives?

>$304 is the cost for the hardware. (not including floppy/CD-RW)

>RedHat Linux 8.0 costs $40 for installation media.

>Total labor costs are $150.

>Shipping is whatever you want to pay to the post office.

>Drives are $28 for the floppy and $69 for the CD-RW. Since these

>computers are Mini-ITX form factor, the cases are too small to your

>standard IDE drives. This is good because the cases are attractively

>small (about the size of a VCR), but it means that the drives are

>external USB drives and so more expensive.

>I included the drive costs as a one-time fee because I had suggested to

>Michael that you just buy one of each since they're external. He says

>this is considered unacceptable for your needs. So if you put one floppy

>on each computer then the per-computer total is $332. I am dubious of

>the reasonability of adding a CD-RW to every computer. Surely they will

>never all be in use. You could just equip a single computer with a CD-RW

>and make it the CD burning computer. If you do need a CD-RW on every

>computer, that brings the per-computer total to $401. Internal slim form

>factor CD-RW drives are also available, but are more expensive, around

>$119.