As an electrical engineer I have had occasion to recommend purchase of some
very specialized, calculation intensive software (very expensive compared to
off-the-shelf commercial software). Not to belittle AERC's tasks of keeping
up with membership, horses, points, awards, and correspondence, but they are
fairly simple compared to the work done by this software. We run it on
fast
486 pc's connected to a Pentium file server that also feeds several network
printers. The small AERC staff can only use a limited amount of hardware.
A
file server with pc's for each employee should be able to do the job well
with
little upgrade expense for several years.
My first thought on seeing the figures in Endurance News was that those
costs
were extremely high and at least as much as the engineering software I use
at
work. Annual updates, in particular, to already purchased programming
should
not cost so much. I agree that someone has either sold AERC a bill of goods
or given very bad advice. (or, as someone else said, I have missed
something.....)
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Dave Bennett
e-mail: idj3q.office@mhs-tva.attmail.com
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