Batboard

I received my May, 2003 Motorola Price Book last week, and I had some spare time this weekend to browse through it. Several other new radios are also out, but I wanted to at least pass on a first look of the pricing on the XTL 5000.

All I can say is: WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I priced up (LIST price) a completely whored-out version of the XTL 5000 (764-870 MHz). How does $10,420 sound (NOT including sales tax nor shipping, etc.)?!

This radio configuration was 10 -35 watt (the highest power available in this band for the XTL 5000) with ALL the bells and whistles such as: P25 Trunking, AES encryption, W9 head, DEK box, Siren/PA, antenna, 2 year warranty/service, etc. If you got a stripped down W5 XTL 5000 with conventional only (no trunking), IMBE, DES-OFB encryption only, no siren/PA, and eliminated other various new features that I included in the fully whored-out radio, then you might get down to $8,500 or so (NOT including tax, shipping, etc.) Maybe even a tad bit less than this, but not much.

Of course, big Public Safety agencies are going to get discounts off this list price, maybe 20 to 30 percent, or even more of a discount.

The only good news is that are some KEWL new feature sets available that are not available on the ASTRO Spectra, nor even the ASTRO Spectra Plus. I assume that this now becomes Motorola's top tier Public Safety radio.

Larry

And the Feds will buy them buy the 10,000 when it comes out in VHF and UHF for the new P-25 trunked systems they are putting in now. WOW taxpayers dollars. And the old Astor Spectra Plus radios they will junk 1 yr old will be destroyed per the new rules, no more surplus, they are to sensative for the public to get, based on the new papers they are going by, they think what a waste but that is politics ans lobbying.

What's just as bad is that public safety agencies will buy-up a ton of these radios for $10,000 each using your tax dollars, yet all system users will still be using Nextel for everything because Nextel will still be causing horrendous interference for the radio.

-Josh