[apowell]

It'll be tough to avoid supporting the hardware. If it's provided by you and used to run your application, then you're going to get the support calls.

You can push the client to call the hardware vendor ("we don't support hardware, read your contract, here's the number for Dell"), but that's going to frustrate the client and reflect poorly on your business.

It sounds like a losing proposition unless you price the hardware and hardware support into the cost of your system.

[aik]

Yeah, good point. We already get hardware related calls and just deal with them. Getting more of those and actually being responsible for them, especially from around the country, I don't believe would be worth the cost if can be avoided.

Perhaps we could just provide consultation services for the client on what good and applicable hardware they could purchase. That is something most of them already need, since they have no IT department or IT knowledge, and at the same time it would be removed enough from us.

[brudgers]

One could possibly provide the hardware on a capital lease agreement and then use their retained ownership to obtain warranty service on behalf of the customer from the hardware vendor...though IANAL.

The other option would simply to be a reseller. http://www.techdata.com/

[aquark]

And lock down the OS as much as possible. It will be bad enough supporting genuine issues, dealing with 'your laptop doesn't run XYZ' would be even worse.