My contractor just finalized my window order, so I thought I'd share the information.

What I wanted was impact resistant windows (I live on Kauai, where we had a category 5 hurricane in '92). The house needed 47 windows (all but four of them 3050 double hungs, some of them mulled as doubles and triples), and two 8080 sliders.

Thanks to the wonderful advice I received on this forum, I contacted PGT Industries and Simonton. PGT, it turned out, had a distributor in Honolulu. For Simonton's Stormbreaker Plus, I discovered they weren't distributed any further west than Texas, so I contacted Lansing Building Supplies in Dallas.

The difference in the quotes, not to mention the customer service, was substantial. The Simonton windows came in $8500 cheaper than PGT (including shipping!!!), at around $33,000 (I don't have the exact number yet from my contractor, but that's close). The guy from Lansing returned every phone call within 24 hours if not less, versus the rep for PGT who NEVER replied to my phone calls or emails, and who took twice as long to get an estimate to my contractor. The PGT rep didn't even know that PGT didn't make doublehungs -- something which I knew from reading PGT's web site!

Oberon, if you're reading this, thank you thank you thank you!!!!!

Summer