RANT: My Company's Computer Purchasing

[NutBucket]

Argh. This really made me cringe yesterday. I work for an FFRDC, or Federally Funded Research and Development Corp. So basically we do government work, mainly in conjunction with the Air Force.

You should also know that basically there is some committee that decides what the "corporate standard" PC should be. For a long time they were HP's but we have recently switched to Compaqs. They're chosen based on cost, ease of maintenance, those types of things.

Yesterday one of the guys finally gets his new computer. So I helped him transfer his data from his old comp into the new one, mainly cause I wanted his old one. Anyway, its a Compaq P4, 1.9 Ghz. Cool I thought. I pop off the cover to toss his old hd in it and find to my horror PC133!!!!!!!!! I didn't say anything at the time but I mean WTF are these idiots thinking? I can understand not using Rambus but why in the hell would you choke the system w/ sdram???? Here's the kicker. These are "corporate" systems, right? Meant for Autocad, word processing, e-mail, proggies like Mathcad, etc. So for these decidedly NON 3D apps they equip these machines with Visiontek GF3 Ti500s!!!!! So they can spend money for a freaking GF3 that will never be pushed at all but they have to cut corners and opt for PC133???? Where's the logic here. Ugh.

Frankly, there's nothing wrong with using my current system for these tasks, an HP P2 333 with 192 ram, dual Matrox Millenium 2's running a 21" and a 17" monitor.

This is freaking ridiculous. And to add insult to injury they tell us we have to cut costs!!!???? How about you cut some freaking costs by not buying GF3 Ti500 vid cards that will never be utilized???

 

[Derango]

Wow. Thats pretty much all I can say. Hey, if you want, I can trade you a nice radeon 32MB DDR card for one of those GF3's Much more sensible solution...uh...yea...thats it..

 

[LuNoTiCK]

Thats stupidity. I dont see why they don't get some rdram, the costs difference is so little. What are they thinking getting geforce 3 ti500's. How many computers did they buy?

 

[Pocatello]

I'm sure those PCs still fly with Quake 3 . Rambus would make those computers faster, in benchmarks. But you're not playing benchmarks, I hope
Gasp, I checked my 600MHz PIII with PC100 and a GF DDR, and it still plays 3D games well enough. Oh MY!

 

[PsychoAndy]

ok, you work for the government, which is mismanaging money through incompetence.

and this is out of the usual...........how?

 

[Geekbabe]

lol,I hear you, I got a load of TNT2 pro's that were pulled from a fleet of brand new, special order Compaq's because WIN98 didn't have native driver support and the IT guys wanted a smoother rollout.. Hahaha can you say mistakes made in ordering ?

 

[spidey07]

Maybe the head PC manager really had a thing against RAMBUS. Maybe he was betting on cheap pc133. How quickly we forget how much we hated them a year ago, eh?


Might actually be a brilliant move. I wouldn't do it, but can see reasons why.

 

[Maverick]

man I'd be tempted to take one of those GF3 TI500's and swap it with something cheaper...guy at my old workplace did that all the time.

 

[Ns1]

<< ok, you work for the government, which is mismanaging money through incompetence.

and this is out of the usual...........how? >>




lol

 

[toant103]

take the Geforce 3 out. hehehe

 

[fatalbert]

I would very much want to take a GF3

 

[Slap]

We are using Dell Optiplex GX240's. They have P4's with PC133 and Radeon 7500's. They work great for typical business apps. No need to spend the extra money when it is not needed.

 

[SpecialEd]

hey... autocad 2002 can push a GF3 Ti 500 to its limit. At my firm we have dwgs that so complicated and huge that they will always run choppy no matter what video card you have. and we do have a couple of systems with Ti500s in them.

 

[Red Dawn]

<< We are using Dell Optiplex GX240's. They have P4's with PC133 and Radeon 7500's. They work great for typical business apps. No need to spend the extra money when it is not needed. >>

Why bother with a P4 when a P3 1 gig would work as well or better if it's a lower end P4(like 1 .4 or 1.5 GHZ)). A P4 1.6 using Sdram is owned by a AMD Tbird at 1.2 running on a 266 FSB (and probably by a P3 1.13 @133 FSB) An overclocked Tualatin Celeron 1 gig running at 1.33 GHZ would own it too. The scalability for those systems is nil sp unless you were upgrading from P3 500 or 733 systems it looks as if it was a waste of money. Of course as long as the systems work with out any major problems and the Support from Dell or Comapct is good nobody will notice, even when the productivity stays the same among the employess.

 

[1Brett]

Here's one of the reasons that I like being the IT *department* at a small company. Just recently put together my new system, Athlon XP 1800+, Soyo Dragon +, 512MB PC2100, and a Radeon 7000. Yeah, yeah, the 7000 - hey, even with a blank check, there's no reason to be silly about it.

Only problem is that this machine spanks my main home system, which makes me a little sad -- unfortunately, the boss at home (aka wife) isn't as generous with project funding.

 

[NutBucket]

Believe me when I say its tempting to grab one of those GF3s. I've got such a good gig here though that I would not want to risk it for a $300 piece of hardware I could buy myself if I really wanted it. As far as numbers, I don't know. I would say a rough estimate is at least 650 machines. The system that they were deploying before this one had P3 933 with i815 and GF2 of some variety, don't recall which. And, while Autocad can bring a computer to its knees I know for a fact that 95% of the people using these machines will never come close to it.

 

[Nocturnal]

how about going into every one of those computers and taking out the geforce 3 ti500's and selling them here!!!

J/K!

 

[yoda291]

eh, don't worry about it then. Maybe compaq threw in the gf3s as an upgrade path, or it was sold to them that way or they were cut a deal. The fact of the matter is, most users won't even push a 1.0Ghz machine of any branding. Maybe the company had some foresight in the video card arena, cuz when you have to get rid of the computers, the gf3s will still be more than enough for operations. The IT department I work at has become very good at the ol' swap and shop.

 

[Slap]

<< Why bother with a P4 when a P3 1 gig would work as well or better if it's a lower end P4(like 1 .4 or 1.5 GHZ)). A P4 1.6 using Sdram is owned by a AMD Tbird at 1.2 running on a 266 FSB (and probably by a P3 1.13 @133 FSB) An overclocked Tualatin Celeron 1 gig running at 1.33 GHZ would own it too. The scalability for those systems is nil sp unless you were upgrading from P3 500 or 733 systems it looks as if it was a waste of money. Of course as long as the systems work with out any major problems and the Support from Dell or Comapct is good nobody will notice, even when the productivity stays the same among the employess. >>



Good points, but it is hard to get a better built and reliable system than the Dell Optiplex. I have about 60 Dell's here and have only had two problems, one hard drive went bad and one lcd on a laptop (due to being dropped). If the GX240 was offered with PIII and PC133 I would probably buy those. The GX240's work flawlessly and are absolutely silent. I buy the small form factor ones for almost everyone. These things take up very little space. Combine it with a 17" LCD and you have tons of desktop space left. Unless they need a CD-ROM and RW there is no need to get the tower. For our engineering department and machine shop, I buy different Dell's. The Precision workstations are very nice coupled with Quadro's.

Back to the topic. If the computers were needed for CAD, I don't think the memory will hurt you to bad. Some of our CAD machines are PIII's with PC133 and Geforce2 and they still work very well for Auto CAD 2000i. Now our Master CAM machines need fast everything. Just ordered a P4 2.0GHz Precision with 1GB RDRAM and Quadro. It also has 36GB SCSI HD. When running a tool path on these things it can bring the system to its knees.

I guess I am kinda pro Dell when it come to business systems. At home.....always build your own.