Joel on Hardware

Joel Spolsky has started a series called Colo Expansion on his blog: Joel On Software. Joel is upgrading all his server hardware, and is blogging the experience.

Here's one tidbit I found to be handy:

I called up Dell and got a quote for this whole mess. By the way, if you're ever buying more than one or two machines, it's worth actually calling Dell. Somehow you always get a lower price than you would have gotten on the website. I've also been told that if you call during the last week of Dell's fiscal quarter, which I just missed, you get great deals as they spaz out trying to make their numbers for Wall Street in a classic display of American public company mismanagement.

BTW if your looking to buy a car, your more likely to get a better deal at the end of the month, because the salesmen want to reach their monthly goals/quotas... Apparently the same applies for buying servers.