How long's this offer for, Kristen?

I'm not sure. He's checking to see how long he can get the same price on the hardware. I'm hoping for Tuesday or Wednesday.

Also, on the commitment front, with a higher setup fee [$250 as opposed to $100], we can do a month-to-month agreement. I would, however, want to change the TOS to add in a 60-day notice requirement of cancellation.

As far as I can tell, Steven has little motivation to not cut his stressy lossy with us, so I don't see anything shady about the offer. Extra memory is always great, but I wish the incentives had been a discount.

But whatever. We have another offer, and we have another deadline. Let us consider. Yeah -- what is the deadline?

But I really don't think there's been anything shady, sneaky, under-handed or whatever about it.

That's not what I meant at all, although I see why you'd think I did. We said we didn't want his offer and he came back with a better one. That's a form of haggling in my book. YHMV.

His situation has changed.

C'mon. What could have possibly changed in the course of an hour or two? I'm willing to be convinced, but I find it hard to believe.

C'mon. What could have possibly changed in the course of an hour or two?

Jon, really don't want to be rude, but I'm reading you as pretty confrontational. Could you rephrase?

OK, before people jump on me, I can see how he might have gotten a time-sensitive deal on hardware and only just found out that he could get a better deal. I apologize. It's Friday afternoon and I'm not thinking (or writing) as clearly as I should be.

Seriously though, why would we want a bigger drive and more memory? Aren't we still better off with iStrata?

Snerk. Okay, how 'bout as people jump on you?

Heh. You were right though, Helen. It's just that whenever I hear one of those "Now! For a limited time!" type offers, my sceptic-o-meter jumps into the red. Doesn't mean that there aren't occasionally good reasons for the deadline.

Seriously though, why would we want a bigger drive and more memory? Aren't we still better off with iStrata?

These are really the crucial (and only answerable, imo) questions.

If the issue is connections vs money, does the additional hardware close the gap sufficiently between what we have now and what we want?

does the additional hardware close the gap sufficiently between what we have now and what we want?

If only we agreed on what we wanted. Extra memory gives us more room we can use if we run up major connections. Extra HD, not so much.

Seriously though, why would we want a bigger drive and more memory?

Well, the more memory makes the server faster and to my way of thinking, a faster server processes queries faster which leaves connections open for a shorter span of time which allows for less overlap of connections used. But, admittedly, I could be wrong about that. More storage would give you more extra space to sell off to friends and relatives and let you reduce your costs even further.

Aren't we still better off with iStrata?

I honestly don't know. Their numbers are so very much lower than everyone else out there. I don't understand how they provide a truly managed dedicated server for that price. And it's one of those situations where we probably won't know unless we try and something goes wrong and there's, like, no backup.