Thanks for the complement.
Actually I may have an opening in Denver soon.
New equipment is tough. One thing I've really become annoyed at with Compaq/HP is the constant architecture changes where a new server is not compatible with previous ones. At a large company, we've tried to buy in bulk, so we buy multiple servers at a time and then tend to phase out together. Since we buy some many (3 yr cycle, hundreds of Wintel servers), it's less of an issue.
When I was with a smaller company, we tried to do the same thing. Delay purchases and then bunch them up with some that were not quite needed, but we wanted to have similar equipment. We also tried to be sure we purchased multiple items where possible. Like 3rd party RAID controllers. Buy 2 at first, take the budget hit, but have the spare ready.
Steve Jones