<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV><DIV>On Apr 6, 2006, at 9:13 AM, Greg Newell wrote:</DIV><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Brad,</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>I like your thinking here. I would still prefer a web based system (password protected) in which you could click on and add to a shopping cart and their updated price would fill in automagically. Your password should automagically bring up your account info and shipping info and voila! it's done!!!</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR></DIV><DIV>You can do that now with any shopping cart which allows you to back off final execution of an order ("Empty Cart" or other cancel button). Essentially you're using the Cart not as an order form as the vendor intended, but as your own personal scratch pad. When you've got everything on your scratch pad, you can print it hard copy, save it as .pdf, or click/drag to cut&paste just the list you've built without the rest of the html on the shopping cart page. (Thus copied, the text is tab-delimited and drops right into a spreadsheet). The one thing which you might not get is S&H, which sometimes only fills in after actual execution. S&H is small enough to pay for out of your mark-up.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Jurgen Goering was just asking about where convenience really lay, whether in the hardcopy or online.Years ago, I designed an estimating database (whose records were parts from vendors catalogs as well as my own job-costed chunks of net time labor) starting with a paper inspection form and ending with a report to the client. However I still find myself doing the estimates manually, pad and pencil. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I always prefer searching and sorting by computer, but no spreadsheet or database is flexible enough to contain all the numerous "notes in the margin" and sidebar recalculations which inevitably occur during a well-planned estimate. Yes, it's possible to compare the cost of boring/shaping/hanging your own hammers with that of pre-hangs using a computer parts list. And yes, my database can annotate whether a chunk of labor and associated parts were a solid element in the estimate, as opposed to an option or a contingency. This is all still on the assumption that estimating is as simple as making a hamburger at "Have It Your Way" Burger King. Unless you're replacing everything from new (or unless you're on the basis of "tell you how much it cost I'm finished"), it never is.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Back on the topic of convincing vendors to adapt web-based catalogs, I can understand a vendor's case-closed and mind-closed reflex that making prices available online invites corporate spying. But when they realize that technically, it's already there to a limited extent with the shopping cart (and completely, with Steinway's spreadsheet), the argument is moot. I bet if we mounted a good petition and took it around the Exhibition Hall in Rochester, we could find someone to jump on board, and in doing so trumpet themselves as the industry leader. I'm betting on Wally Brooks and Jurgen Goering. (Jurgen already sends out a .pdf pricelist, which although searchable is mainly for printing a hard copy. From what I can tell, Brooks Ltd. doesn't even have a web site, but Wally could be convinced to do something exciting and cutting-edge modern.)</DIV><BR><DIV> <SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Bill Ballard RPT</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">NH Chapter, P.T.G.</DIV><DIV><A href="mailto:wbps@vermontel.net">wbps@vermontel.net</A><BR></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Reality is the first casualty of technology</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> ...........NPR Commentator Daniel Schorr</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">+++++++++++++++++++++</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"></SPAN> </DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>