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"Does anyone have an educated ballpart figure regarding the mean per pad cost for support over three years" ~~~~~~~~~~ The Mobiles group (including Easy Serv) at IBM's PC Company's Personal Systems Help Center employs about 60-70 call-takers at $27,500/year plus (only recently) benefits. One in ten is a product specialist making in the low 30s. Plus a percentage of the Cross-Products group (about 30 total employees) and the Operating Systems group (another 60-70 employees), both of which spend a portion of their time supporting Thinkpads. Add in the percentage of PC Company administration, rent, light bill, return shipping, internal IS dept, legal services and cafeteria that the Mobiles group eats up over there on Cornwallis Rd and divide that by the number of Thinkpads sold. (I doubt PSNote laptops are a significant portion, as support for them is going fee-based.) I h ave no clue where this leaves the cost of technical support, but just try to get Compaq on the phone. The PSHC isn't great, but it's better than most & you'll find the same lack of knowledge everywhere in the industry. Nobody can keep good tech support for more than a year because, for an intelligent person, the work sucks. Everyone treats it like a resume builder because, with half a brain, you can get a good PC education doing tech support & move on to a better job somewhere else. I'm don't often jump to IBM's defense (primarily because I used to work for the PSHC & IBM is a lousy employer), but there is much worse support out there. Anyway, if you're figuring the cost of tech support, this might help. Michael J. Verne mverne@vmedia.com Systems Analyst, Ventana Communications Group, Inc. "I god guts, no more braims."