Company PC Purchasing Question

[ShaggyOne]

I'm a PC/Network Analyst and was looking for other company policies on this issue.

I hate buying user computers from Dell or any other biggie since the computers are so beefy now. None of my users will ever need a 1ghz+ or 40GB drive machine. The prices are ok but I could cut that in half by building my own.

What is your company's trend on this? Do I have a valid case or am I just nickel and diming to the big guys.


Thanks,
ShaggyOne

 

[spidey07]

How many people?

If it is 10 then maybe you could get away with building them. If it is 50 or more you probably should look into dell or compaq with maintenance. The key word is support and maintainability.

you wouldn't want to go an put AMD processors in a business machine and have them crash all the time now would you?

 

[Buddha Bart]

building your own would be such a horkin pain in the rear. Not only to do, but to support.
As usual its the little things that'll eat you to death. Troubleshooting a few sticks of uncooperative ram, replacing a part that normal retail stores don't stock anymore, dealing with a bad crop of motherboards, managing a driver-matrix from 20 differnet companies.

For instance, where I work, straight up IBM shop. Granted I would love it if we were smarter about it (like actually looking into and picking a smart model, not just whatever the mid-class soho box is).

How big a buy is this? When things start to get large, its the asset-tracking and management options that should really be making the decision.

bart

 

[ShaggyOne]

There are over 150 desktops. Some of the issues that we have had, Dell will not help us on. I've ran some Mobo/RAM diagnostic tests on some trouble PCs and found some bad mobos. No matter what RAM I put in the machine, there are always errors (mobo problem). I then ran Dell's diagnostic software and it found nothing. I've gone through other troubleshooting steps with Dell and they can't fix it. They will not accept there is a hardware problem because their cheesey diagnostics software did not find any. So I'm stuck with about 3 PCs right now that crash constantly and Dell will not resolve. On other issues, they have been helpful after a 30 minute on hold session each time.

I'm not a big fan of Compaq. I actually think that home building these machines would make them more stable. I'll be able to choose exactly what brands and specs go where. I hate integrated boards even if they are cheaper. Dell allows hardly any customization in the "customizer" area.

Thanks spidey07,
ShaggyOne

 

[mboy]

First off, my AMD machines at home NEVER crash, but plenty of my Pentium machines crash at work. Granted they are pretty old. Since my budget at work here is almost nil, I have been getting refurbed PII 266 machines from teamexcess.com. Cost me like $120 ea. shipped, have a 4.3 Gb drive, 10/100 net cards and 64mb ram. They work for the most part for the non cpu intensive office stuff we run here.

 

[ShaggyOne]

Thanks for all the input guys. This helps.

This isn't a major buy. We do not have a need to buy in bulk at the moment.

Other than Dell, what companies are you guys using? For the Dell users, how are your feelings on the Optiplex line-up?

 

[mboy]

The refurbs I am buying (they all have a 1 yr warranty buy the way) are actually Dell Optiplex GXa 266's. These are the best crop of computers I have at work if you can believe that. Never a problem with any of them yet. FWIW, I HATE Compaq and will never, ever, ever, buy one of those again, or an IBM for that matter. Micron seemed to be ok when I was using those.

 

[vi edit]

I've been buying Optiplex refurbs (GX110 and GX150) for a little over two years now and I'm very happy with them. Out of the 20 that I've put in, not a single issue *knocks on wood*

They're really nice machines. Every single component, including motherboard, can be swapped out without the use of tools and can be done in a matter of minutes. They are quiet, and damn sturdy.

I've been buying P3-900's or so w/ 128 megs ram, 10 gig HD's, OS, Keyboard, Mouse, and 3 year on site warranty for about $600 a piece. Not a bad deal if you ask me. I can do even better if I buy in groups of 5 or 10. If I bought in groups of ten, they'd run me about $550 a piece. Even better.

The machines I buy use the Intel I810 or I815 which is more than sufficient for office use. Excellent machines at an excellent price.

When you say tha you can do better, are you factoring Operating system and software as well?

 

[hoihtah]

i'm a firm believer that it's not worth you headache
neither is it worth the savings.

as someone else mentioned...
in business it's all about support and maintenability.

let's say it costs 1000 for a computer purchased from dell
and you can build a same or better performing computer for 500. (which is all very possible)

you are saving your company 500/computer.

and while this may seem like a huge savings...
if any one of those computer starts to act up...
(and you know it will... there's no crash-proof computer)
it'll be your time and head on the line.

let's say you build 100 computers and save your company $50,000.
it'll be 100 computers that you have to maintain.

from company's perspective...
if you were to ever leave the company...
they are stuck with 100 computers without a way of maintaining them.
of course you can buy support for these 100 computers from a third party.
but that ends up being much more than 500/computer that you saved them.

either way... it's a lose / lose situation.

but then again, that's just my opinion.

 

[neuralfx]

One option is Barbone Units .. now this may be impractical if you need to purchase 150 at a time, but you do not have to deal with the aforementioned "horkin pain" as mentioned before of building a lot of systems, and you can find a good deal .. like tiger direct's i-systems .. and most operating systems you will be able to remotely deploy .. well just a thought, hope this helps ..
-neural

 

[reicherb]

I've actually began to look closely at some smaller companies. I?ve got an eval system coming from a company out of North Dakota called DakTech. They beat Dell and Compaq prices have a 7 year warranty on PCs (3 on monitors). They have been around for 11 years and sound pretty good to me. I'm looking to buy about 75 of them for computer labs in a high school.

I'll let you know how the eval goes. Should arrive Friday or Monday.

 

[mcveigh]

I too like the dell optiplex line, I don't have a lot of experience with them but it's been all good.

DONT GET COMPAQ!!, I hate Compaq with a burning unquenchable rage that can never be put out.:|
piece of crap proprietary drivers......
:|

just my 2 cents

 

[spidey07]

<< DONT GET COMPAQ!!, I hate Compaq with a burning unquenchable rage that can never be put out. >>


Its funny how people hate Dell or hate Compaq. I woudn't give Dell a penny due to the fact that I've given them a chance three times to come through on large PC/laptop/server rollouts. Dell continuously displayed imcompetence and an inability to get the job done, product delivered, billing correct and professional services that aren't full of pimple faced teenagers. Couple that with a 40% failure rate on laptops 2 out of the three times they were given a chance and there you have it. Compaq was also given three separate chances - shined on service, product, price, billing and project management.

I wouldn't touch dell with a ten foot pole. All of my buddies in the business (infrastructure directors, CIOs) feel the same way.

Compaq is by far the better choice. Based strictly on indepth experience with both companies.

 

[Garion]

My two cents..

First, on the build vs. buy.. I agree with everything that's been said on the cost of maintenance, etc. and have one thing to add: Standardization. When you buy a name-brand PC you're guaranteed to have everything be absolutely identical and you can usually get the same machine for a few months (especially with IBM/Compaq, Dell a bit less so). When you're dealing with 150+ PC's the only logical way to deploy them is to build a "gold" PC and take an image of it with Ghost or DriveImage, then burn that image onto the PC's your going to deploy. Every major company that I've ever seen deploys PC's in this manner - For example, the bank I work for has literally 500+ "gold" images for different needs - Branches, back offices call centers, this app, that app, etc. If something goes really bad, slap the boot disk in, have coffee and you've got a perfect working PC again. Clones can come close, but you're always going to end up with some oddballs - Different IRQ's here, some odd hardware conflict there, a different version on the video card BIOS that isn't compatible with the driver you've used other places, etc.

One last piece of advice.. Saying that "None of my users will ever need a 1Ghz+ or a 40 GB drive machine" is being a bit shortsighted. When Windows XP 2003 comes out the REQUIRES a 1 Ghz machine and 8 GB of drive space, then Office 2004 that needs 512 MB RAM and a 1.2 Ghz processor, you're done. IMHO, a minimum corporate PC should be a 1 Ghz P3 with 256 MB RAM. A more realistic one would be a 1.6 GB P4 (Or some kind of higher-end Athlon) with 512 MB DDR RAM. High end would be a full P4 2.2 w/ 512 MB RAM. Each "step" in this scale will give you about another year of functionality. Your P3 will be no more than 2 years, your P4 1.6 will be about three and your P4 2.2 might give you about four, depending on your apps.

Of course, if you're a company that has been happily running your DBASE III+ app on the 486's for years, this might be overkill. But if you're going to be using office apps, browsing, e-mail, etc. you're going to want the faster speeds and better performance, if not for today, but for tomorrow's apps.

This cost is sometimes hard to justify, but there's usually a fairly simple way around it. Ask your accountant what the depreciation schedule is on a PC. Most companies have a 3 to 4 -year depreciation cycle. It's not hard to show that spending $900 on a PC that's used for two years and paid for over four years isn't a good deal compared to a single $1500 PC that is used for and paid for over four years.

- G

 

[PlatinumGold]

<< I agree with everything that's been said on the cost of maintenance, etc. and have one thing to add: Standardization. When you buy a name-brand PC you're guaranteed to have everything be absolutely identical and you can usually get the same machine for a few months (especially with IBM/Compaq, Dell a bit less so). >>



actually this is not necessarily true. i believe dell puts whatever is cheapest at the moment in the value line of pcs. things like nics, hd, vid cards. are not necessarily identical because they are considered commodity's. if you get the optiplex line mb. even then i don't think it is guaranteed unless you specifically request it.

 

[reicherb]

I agree with Spidey. Stay away from Dell. We have about 250 year old Dells OptiPlexs that fail at 10 times the rate of 100 3-year-old Compaq (can't think of the model). It's not been and specific part with the Dells either. We've had bad hard drives, motherboards, power supplies, monitors, CD and floppy drives, and get this case bezels. They shipped us about 50 PCs that you couldn't put floppies in because the hole in the case bezel didn't line up with the drive.

In the last year I've replaced 1 Compaq video card and 1 motherboard.

I'd like to stay away from the proprietary systems though and am looking at the smaller guys.

 

[ShaggyOne]

Thank you all for your thoughts on this. There are many valid points here.

It seems to be split on Compaq vs. Dell. I've had service issues with Dell. Since we don't buy enough, the sales rep rarely calls me back (hence why we don't buy much). I do think standardization is key but Dell changes the specs on their PC lines practically daily.

I do see the points that have been made but I think they are valid for larger businesses. We have about 175 PCs and 250 employees. Pretty small company. We do not buy PCs in lots. We only buy them as needed which could be one a month or 5 a month. We have some high end users and low end users. We usually drop the low end PCs to the low end users and vice versa.

Right now we are running Win98se and Office 2k. Our users probably get a new PC every 3 years or so. We've only gone through 1 desktop OS change since then. I know looking down the line beefier computers would be necessary but we do not have REAL high end users here. Giving out a 1ghz just so they can play solitare faster is not my idea of evolution. I think we'll stay with buy over build. Now just to decide on Compaq, Dell or a smaller shop.

Thanks again for all your time.
Shaggyone