It seems that large vendors miss out on bottom-up sales opportunities. Imagine if I as a developer could sign up for a free, three month test drive without ask

It seems that large vendors miss out on bottom-up sales opportunities. Imagine if I as a developer could sign up for a free, three month test drive without asking permission from my boss or anybody else but Cisco. I'd bring the thing to work, show it off, build some little app that would display order shipment information from the ERP system, and then show it to the VP of Sales. A few months later, the Cisco sales rep would be having a high-level conversation where the value proposition was already made. Instead, Cisco will concentrate on convincing the VP of Sales and the VP of IT that a million dollar tablet purchase would be successful and that one could indeed connect the ERP system to it. I love TI's supposed entry into the hobby market with its $4.30 demo device. If nothing else, it's a cheap way to cement brand recognition with a bunch of techies. It's gravy if their $0.75 chips make into some consumer product because the demo board was the path of least resistance to building a prototype.