How to buy 1000's of computers / parts for 1000's of computers???

[zephyrprime]

Originally posted by: biostud
I wonder how a person who doesn't know how to get 1000 PC's is in charge of buying them. Normally you would have a pretty qualified salescontract dealer/IT management to handle orders like this.

I know! Pretty scary. ha ha!

Buying 1000 computers isn't any sort of mystery. You just call dell or HP or any number of big vendors. Call and don't use the net becuase you can get a better deal that way. Be sure you price everything out before hand so you don't sound like a rube that can be taken advantage of. I definitely recommend buying prebuilt instead of doing it yourself in this case because it's far too much labor to build all those pcs and install OS's on them. Also, OEMS get a discount on licenses which you can't get at retail. If you do have to buy windows licences yourself, buy just the license in multipacks which is much cheaper than buying retail boxes.

And besides, it's cheaper to buy from a vendor than to build from scratch anyway nowadays (excluding high end systems/servers).

If you need any help deploying, you can easily hire temp IT help to do that sort of thing from a temp staffing firm.

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm worried about what sort of infrastructure setup you have. Do you even have any servers or connectivity in place? Who's running this show anyway?

 

[zephyrprime]

Originally posted by: Supafast
No problem. I am building them to run WinXP and Microsoft SQL Server Express which is going to be fed a whole bunch of data and it will do some basic queries on the data. The reason for the (preferably) hot swap RAID1 HD's and the dual power supplies is that I need to have as much hardware reduncancy as possible for this system, not for more power or speed. I am limited to installing only 1 of these servers per site and as far as I know, the only real failover you can have (without going super crazy) is Hard Drives and Power Supplies. Nicely, they are the top two most likely to fail components, not that I want either to go bad, but it happens...

Actually, there are systems that can survive cpu's dying and memory sticks dying.

 

[Hyperlite]

Yeah i agree. This is a massive undertaking. Even through a major mfr, production will have to be scheduled. Its not like you can call up ABS or something and say "i need 1500 units with this, this, and this. Please shut down your resale operations and tell me when your finished." the only way to do it is with a major mfr or 300+ trained staff."

oh yeah, and alot of money.

 

[Supafast]

Once again I wish to again thank everyone who posted helpful comments.
Yes, I did mean redundant power supplies, not "dual". That's what I get from typing faster than thinking. (Has anyone actually built a computer with dual non-redundant PS's btw?)

I have obviously never undertaken building a huge quantity of computers with my company because if I have, I wouldn't need to ask these questions...
I have bought large quantities of computers using Dell before (100's), but they are not customized beyond what model and options you pick to go with/in that model. I am not really going deep into the details of how or why I am doing this project, but I'm pretty sure that I am fully qualified. Many have mentioned the differences between building 10 or 20 computers and building 1000+ which includes having enough room for assembly and testing, manpower, etc. I'm suprised only 1 guy mentioned money... do you have any idea how much it's gonna cost to do this? (1000 PC's * $1500 = $1,500,000 for example)

So, I wish to thank all those who are concerned about the how to "get it done" factor, I can assure you all that those needs are being thoroughly considered. The reason for doing the building ourselves vs. OEM system builders is cost savings and quality. If it is determined that an OEM builder that already pumps out 1000's of PC's a month can do it for a good price and do a really good job then that would definitely be the way to go.

That's why I came to my highy technical peers to see if anyone knew the best way to either source parts and software or of a really good large volume OEM who would be willing to build computers according to my required specs.

So, with that said, please do not post about buying from Dell, HP, IBM, etc. (they are too inflexible) and please don't tell me why I should or should not do this project or other things I need to consider to build the computers with my company.

Thanks again,
Craig

Supafast
Xtreme11