With the economy in the dumps, tightening of the purse strings is uber-important. This holiday season, I have been checking my favorite "deal" sites daily to buy Christmas gifts for just a little less. I have shopped Graveyard Mall, Woot, Shirt Woot, Deep Discount, and Amazon's Gold Box recently to save a few bucks on gifts for some of my favorite people. The best deal I got was from Deep Discount...2 bars of soap, one says "butt" and the other says "face" for $2.98 with free shipping. This for a $5 gift exchange that my 15 year old son will participate in. A $2.00 savings!
What about when schools need to purchase new technology? How can districts, especially small ones, save money? It isn't as simple as shopping at a deal of the day site. First, most sites only allow you to buy three of an item. Also, who is going to get that requisition approved TODAY because the deal ends at midnight? Finally who wants all of those different brands and models floating around because each laptop was purchased from a different discount site. There has to be some way of cutting costs while obtaining quality products.
Today I noticed an add at Deal News for a Dell M109S Ultraportable LED DLP Projector. The price was right: $499. Plug in the coupon code and it brought the price down to $399.20 with free shipping. Sounds great, huh? But what about quality? Can a district afford to cut the price of projectors by 1/2 or more if they will have to replace them twice as often? Should a district compromise picture quality for budget savings? On the other hand, should a district continue to buy projectors that need bulbs replaced often at exorbitant costs?
My request today is responses to the following questions:
-How does your district approach finding quality technology at affordable prices?
-Have you used the Dell M109S projector? If so, what is your opinion?
-Do you have any favorite "deal sites"? Share and I will post them!
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