By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Barton County has developed a plan for the annual replacement of computers. The relatively new practice improves the county's technological capabilities and allows for more consistent budgeting. Tuesday morning, IT Director Dereck Hollingshead asked the county commission for approval to purchase 31 new computers.
"Every year, Barton County IT reaches out to all the department heads, and we ask how many computers each department wants to replace," he said. "We tally those up and take that number out for bid. We've done this for the last four or five years. This year, we went out for bid for 31 computers and some miscellaneous devices."
The county received no local bids but six out-of-state companies submitted bids. RocketDrop came in with the low bid of $29,745, and the commission approved that Tuesday morning. Hollingshead has been impressed with RocketDrop's customer service.
"I sent an email pretty early one morning and I had a response before I got into the office," he said. "They're very responsive, and we exchanged several more emails just clarifying some details and things like that."
The 31 computers purchased this year are a slight decrease from the 35 computers and devices purchased in each of the last two years.