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How Much Are You Paying For A Nameplate?
Matey-O writes: "I realize most of you built your systems youself (with mad overclocking style) but if you've purchased a fully built system receintly from Compaq, Dell, HP or Apple, you may have a computer built by Quanta, a very quiet, very successful Taiwanese manufacturing company. NY times article here." (This is true at least of notebooks.)
Having run tools like dmidecode across a lot of systems the laptop market definitely has a lot of rebadging going on. Taking apart other devices shows its nothing new. HP printers are full of canon parts, HP's early digital cameras are Konica, Dell laptops don't all seem to be made by Dell. Most vendors desktops at the lower end are handled by big .tw build to order houses.
Its not cost effective to run a computing hardware company in the USA
With a major brand name, you're paying for marketing and advertising, as well as the product. If a brand name is good enough to gain a reputation by word-of-mouth alone, it's likely to be true, as negative criticism spreads twice as fat as positive.
Now, if they only made desktops...
If I weren't nailed to the penis, I'd be pushing up the daisies!
Why not log in with one of the numerous "public" accounts? Like username nospam, password nospam.
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
From what I read in the article, it sounds like they really only supply laptops for these companies.
The article also mentions some other interesting things, such as how Dell's success with notebooks depends on Quanta's efficiency in production.
I would like to point out that the article states that Dell popularized the concept of just-in-time manufacturing. Maybe in the realm of computers, but they've been doing that elsewhere (such as the auto industry) for many many years.
What?
I used to build systems for friends and family by going to the computer shows. The downside was always having to support software issues, but I iused to make some good cash from it.
I now turn them away and tell them to buy from Gateway or Dell instead - a Gateway can be had now for as little as 600.00 US complete. My profit margin would be very slim having to build it myself.
The only downside I see is that the namebrands tend to have some hardware issues if you try to change the OS from whatever they ship with. Seems as if the sound card/ video card is proprietary in some fasion, and even switching from the Millenium OS to Win 98 can be a chore since the manufacturers don't supply drivers for the other equiptment.
The upside is, I can refer them to name brand tech support and go back to gaming instead of sitting on a phone for 2 hours fixing a Microsoft bug.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
All you need to get a NY Times login is an e-mail address. The rest is just demographics questions which you can lie in response to. So, go get a hotmail account with false information, and then fill out the form with false information, and you'll have a login. It's magical.
What?
Here is their "English" website.
http://www.quantatw.com/edefault.htm
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
When Dell first started using Quanta (they also used Compal MoBo's) in laptops in 1998, they got to specify the quality and construction of the product. You might find the same boards in a Time PC or a Tiny PC, but I guarantee that the Dell's will have a better mean time between failures (MBF).
This had some interesting side-effects. It also meant that some strange side-effects occurred. For instance in mid-1999, you had HP and Dell machines with interchangeable components as they were both based on Quanta decks. This actiually proved useful.
So and OEM behind laptops? Bring 'em on! All we need is for them to sell components to the public and self-built laptops aren't that far away.
One of the other big names is Compal.
Read this for more information and specific model numbers.
I just bought a "Toshiba 3005" from them, and since they don't come default operating systems I didn't have to may the M$ tax and get an extra battery instead.
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
I don't know the situation in the US or elsware but in Jamaica the #1 selling desktop by a huge margin is Dell. They actually have a market share in the 50% region. Next in line is Compaq at about 10% followed by all the local white box clones which share most of what's left.
Why the wide difference? Dell has an agreement with a local company to honor the Dell onsite warranty. This means that when your system goes down someone comes to your house with a spare part (after you talk to tech support on one of a very few 1-800 numbers which is free from Jamaica).
IBM, Gateway and most clones don't give you that so if you need that level of support you haven't really got a choice.
I still buy parts and asemble for 70% of the cost and just deal with the local wholesaler for the waranty on each individual part.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
While the first statement seems very sound and realistic the last seams a little short-sighted.
The "killer app" to convert desktop users to notebook users after the plateau is not software. It is the "Internet anyware", wireless, portable, comunications terminal that is a laptop. PDA's are convenient and do their job, ie. quick basic computing on the go. People want portability and that is the notebooks "killer app".
The story, no registration required.
And before someone tries to scold me for this again: This is from a partnership that NYT has with Asahi.com, and it adds Asahi.com's ads to the page. Instead of "paying" with your registration, you're "paying" with the act of barely glancing at Asahi.com's ads for a split second before moving on to the actual story. And the New York Times seems to be fine with it, because they set the whole thing up.
Yes, yes, I do. Enjoy.
You are looking at the future of manufacturing. This business model is growing incredibly fast. To see why look at the XBox process. MS decided they wanted a piece of the console pie, so they got together with a firm that specializes in high tech manufacturing. MS is a company designed around producing software, that is what they do most efficiently. They know that they will not be able to build and run physical factories with the efficiency of a manufacturing company. These specialized manufacturers are amazing. I read in Wired about how the company doing the XBox was in on the design process and they were cutting costs and production times left and right from MS's original design. I understand that the Mexican plant they are using has trucks coming with parts and leaving with product every five mins. and planes taking off and landing at an airport (which they negotiated to be build) every 15 to 20 mins. That's a degree of efficiency MS could never reach. Simply businesses are specializing more to reach peak economic efficacy. BTW Sorry for the terrible structure of this paragraph, I'm at work.. Not much time.
Business News and Resources: www.usasource.net
Just look at the serial number. If it starts with QT, it was made by Quanta.
The implications for the US are interesting. The removal of manufascturing jobs from the US means there are less decent paying jobs in the US, tightening the Job Market.
There are also national security issues, especially in Tiawan, known not only for earthquakes, but for the proximity to a neighbor to the west who is looking forwood to the day when they can regain control of the island. To have a major center of US technology manufacture right next to a major potential enemy is not a smart strategy.
This is part of a much bigger picture, which includes the HB-1 visas, etc. All of which does not bode well for American technology workers in the long term.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I own an Omnibook 6000 (HP) and the only thing manufactured by HP are the casing and the nametag, but I'm not even sure about that. But I do know that it must be a really expensive nametag, since, as a student, I got mine for almost 50% off, and even then it cost as much as other "regular" laptops (8 months ago). *ouch* The hard drive is Hitachi, ethernet by 3Com, sound card by ESS, Intel CPU, Touch pad by Synaptics, Sanyo battery, Toshiba DVD drive, ATI graphics card... not sure about RAM & MoBo though.
I'm also using Apple Pro Keyboard. Works great with PCs. Just a few days ago I had to take it apart to clean it, since dust collecting inside is visible through the transparant plastic it is made of. That was when I discovered that the insides of APK are manufactured by Mitsumi, which is otherwise known as manufacturer of the cheapest components for PCs. While APK does look great and it does have 2 USB ports on it, this still does not make up for almost 12x price increase.
And I suppose that most construction workers don't really "build" houses, because they don't cut down trees to make their lumber, or mine and forge metal to make nails?
You do not need to create every part from nature's barest materials to "build" the finished product.
Quanta also built the Netpliance I-Opener and the Gateway Connected touchpad. Both of which run QNX. Theres a hacking group that stays up to date on various projects on the message boards here. Im not sure what else Quanta has built, but the I-Opener is really built like a tank.
There is no spork.
I worked for Dell, specifically in the Latitude Home / Small Business division, back in 1998 and was shown all the different models on the market released by various OEMs. Then I was given a spreadsheet with system specs which included a column for 'manufacturer' - Quanta and a couple of other names were listed.
:)
Working with the latest laptops, hardware still in beta testing, helped me understand the relationship Dell had with the Taiwanese manufacturer. Dell engineers worked very closely with the engineers on the other side of the world, and we changed specifications when necessary. This is, of course, to be expected - hopefully an OEM doesn't just buy a few hundred thousand laptops without testing them first
One item we changed comes to mind immediately - the rubber feet on Inspiron 7000's were originally made of a material that marked nearly every surface we set them down on. Many people had multiple black spots and marks where the systems sat on their desk. Ick.
Another important matter is support - some people might know that the same company makes systems for multiple OEMs and might even release systems under their own name with the same specifications, but I'll take the system with OEM hardware support that rocks - every support system might have glitches, but after working in Dell's support division, and using them in my current position for three years, I'd prefer to stick with them. I won't say no one is better, or dell never screws up, but they support their product well, very well, in my opinion. Overnight parts when available, Complete Care for LCD breakage and spills that can turn in a system into a paperweight very quickly.
And as far as OEM designs go, the Latitude base framework is hard to beat - there are perhaps a dozen models with interchangeable batteries, optical drives, floppies, power supplies, etc. Supporting them in the office is pretty simple - even if you've been buying the newest models for three years you can use the same spare parts for each as parts wear out. Every office has the same stack of power supplies - sales dorks always leave home without them. Support staff in each office has a very common experience. I don't know of another OEM, perhaps Sony, with such similarity between models. If there are, hey, hit reply.
About $5.00 . Bought one for each of my computers.
www.linuxjewellery.com
In addition to the name plate, you are also paying for support. I doubt that the service is as good when you buy computers direct from the manufacturer at a discounted price. Laptops, in particular, tend to break and usually cannot be fixed by swapping out parts, like a desktop system. I've had to return my DELL Inspiron 7K two times (once for a keyboard problem and once for a display problem). In both cases my laptop was returned to me in two days. For desktop systems, the support is not important to me as I can fix 'em myself.
Did you really think that the big "manufactures" manufacture all their stuff? I wouldn't be surpriced if some items only link with the logo on front, would be the logo. Sometimes these boxes are designed and manufactured somewhere else. Quality assurance and testing go on in-house (If only to preserve brand-name), but design, assembly, packaging, testing and shipping is handled by sub-contractors.
Is this news?
Quanta also manufactured the Netpliance iopener "Internet appliance." They are a very big force in the laptop market, as the article points out.
Funnily enough, the last time I checked with my IS guys, I could put together two complete no-brand systems for what they pay for a full Dell system + support. Given that I spend a lot of time compiling, having two boxen would be a positive benefit. I have the desk space, I have the inclination, and I think we can live with the electricity bill. Worst case, a component fails and I end up with one machine plus a box of spares, with a zero second turnaround, never mind one day.
I suggested this, and got the usual answer: we buy standard Dell boxen because it removes support and maintenance issues.
That sounds fair enough until you consider that I receive exactly zero support for the problems that I have on my machine. We're an R&D shop, and taking risks and pushing things until they go wrong is pretty much what we do for a living. What the IS guys really mean is: nobody ever got fired for buying Dell (/IBM/Microsoft).
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Is that there is not any useable form-factor standard such as there have been for Desktops. I can't hop over to my favorite online parts vendor and grab a case, mobo and cpu. I think that if users were enabled to build their own laptops, computer distribution companies such as HP, Compaq, etc would be held to a slightly higher expectation.
What exchange is this company's stock listed on if any? Does anyone know the ticker? Thank you.
Funnily enough, the last time I checked with my IS guys, I could put together two complete no-brand systems for what they pay for a full Dell system + support.
You forgot about the killer hidden cost: labor. I don't disagree that it'd be much cheaper in materials for us all to build our own boxen (but not laptops, mind you). Factor in just $60/hr for salary, benefits, and support costs for an in-house box-builder. I can build a standardized box in less than an hour, but then there's the OS install, service packs, and device drivers - there goes another two hours. Toss in the app installations, and there goes half a day, and more than $300 in labor - and we haven't even discussed burn-in testing.
Or, I can just pick up the phone and get my customized install done by Dell, drop-installed to anybody's office. Zero labor costs.
What's your damage, Heather?
Here's a businessweek article on Quanta : http://www.quantatw.com/company/quanta/Quanta%20Ed u%20Fundation/enews1.htm
... whatever that means.
They sound like a contract manufacturer to me. But the founder claims that they're not a contract manufacturer, but a "flexible manufacturer"
Better that than my family members who insist on calling the whole computer the hard drive.
Manufacturing outsourcing happens everywhere, not just in tech. Sure, electronics is a big business (that's why the Flextronics of the world do so well), and laptops are particularly ripe for outsourced manufacture, but other industries have products made for them.
The best comparable example I can give is the auto industry. Many car makers have alliances with one another - erstwhile competitors make each other's cars, sometimes in a straight re-badging, other times in a joint assembly line. here's a few "for instances":
Toyota jointly owns a plant with GM. It makes both the Toyota Corolla and the Chevy Prism. They're the same car with different trim. One factory, one car, two companies. Joint ownership.
Honda had no SUV on the boards when the SUV craze struck America, so they came up with the Honda Passport. It's an Isuzu Rodeo with a Honda badge. It's made in Isuzu's factory, and sold by Honda. A straight outsourcing deal.
Ford owns a great deal of Mazda (I'm not sure if they have full control or not). The Escort and Protege were identical - and the Mazda Navajo was just a Ford Explorer Sport. This is an example of two interlocked companies filling out their line together.
When tech manufacture is outsourced, the brand-name company can worry about the design, the feature set, and all the marketing. The manufacturer can worry about actually doing what's possible, and squeezing every possible cent of cost out of the build process. The marketing company then doesn't have to worry about owning expensive factories that depreciate, and the manufacturer can concentrate on building better, faster, and cheaper - with a variety of customers and products that avoids idle plants and workers as best as possible.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
From this part of the Quanta Site.
The chairman announced openly that we are 7-11, the president is busy at the production line in daytime and comes to the R&D to burn the other end of the candle in the evening. We work day and night and night and day to overcome all odds with Quanta...
The market was still small when Quanta decided to develop portable computers, desktop PC was still the mainstream on the market. Apart from LCD and HDD, which are exclusive parts to portable computers, all other parts are the same to that of the desktop computer. The situation is like putting parts of an Infiniti Q30 into a Nissan Sentra. The difficulties at that time is understandable. However hard it was, Quanta's R&D history was started then.
"Do the best to realize your dreams"
As a conclusion, portable PC R&D is brain-consuming work, and many of our colleagues have had their hair turn gray. However, when we see our dreams come true, no one has any regrets and we just keep trying a new task.
Under the direction and insistence of bosses, Quanta's R&D has been running toward practicability, with some differences from others. Low cost and suitability for mass production have been the highest commands of R&D. With cooperation from world leading manufacturers, Quanta products have earned some credits and praises from world famous computer magazines. It is not only recognition of the R&D work, but also a drive for Quanta's efforts on sales achievements.
If R&D is the locomotive, we have been guiding Quanta through all odds over the last decade. We will never spare any time as long as the R&D work continues.
- Documention: Y'know, the dead-tree or online specs that in some cases read as if they were Babelfished from their native tongue and others with beautify lucid, illustrated, and well organized troves of data.
- Support: Who ya gonna call? Even if this is outsourced there's still some sort of coherent product issue / resolution process going on. Websites, call centers, tech notes, latest qualified drivers, etc. If the product is pooched better vendors will simply swap out the problem item.
- Brand Value: Braun doesn't make their own small electronics but folks buy the Braun name. Why? Because through whatever combination of Marketing / Quality Control programs consumers associate Braun products with good devices.
- R & D: They're not called Wintel without a reason. If the motherboard isn't made by Intel, or designed by Intel, or based on an Intel design then you've a rare beast. Even then the components are all about the same - this year's popular chips, or last years, or their knock-offs, all making PCs remarkably homogenous. Canon engines are in HP laser printers which sell far better then their Canon counterparts. Why? Large manufacturers do invest in making their variation somehow slightly "better" even if that only means supplying a better BIOS to the hardware manufacturer.
- Marketing: Hey, folks found them to buy didn't they? There are any number of great products sitting out there that languish without decent marketing. DEC, Novell and Polaroid are examples of companies that had great products and couldn't sell them worth a damn. Apple has good products and flogs them mercilessly to great effect. Take a lesson who is doing well and who is circling the drain or already gone.
- Product Line: Nobody wants to deal with ten vendors for similar products. Rather it is best to get some semblance of unified technology all under a single set of contracts. That means a vendor has to offer a full range of products even if they're not all necessarily completely built by them.
Buy on price, buy on specs, buy on brand name, all are foolish. There's a lot more to a PC then those qualities considered alone. For those all proud that they build their own PCs, well bully for you. How much time did you spend learning what components you wanted, from what vendors you wanted to buy, learning what is required to build a PC and how to go about it? Most folks don't want to invest their time but buy their computers off the shelf with all of the above already done for them.Build a computer, build a house, customize a car, they're all decisions with their own advantages & disadvantages. For the majority just buying the darn thing outright is the way to go.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
As long as you refuse to break your Dell warranty and get inside your system, you will remain attached to their tits. Of course, this is what they want, because you apparently have the money to pay those ridiculous service contracts. For shame!
Got my laptop from Higrade, a UK based reseller of Asus boxes. Asus are well known for the mobos, but less so for their fully assembled products. Take a good look at the specs for the Higrade Notino 2200 (an Asus machine underneath). Basically, the spec is for a PC equivalent of an iBook, at a really competitive price.
You forgot about the killer hidden cost: labor.
And you are forgetting the tech support center's secret weapon: automation.
The crew at the company I work for can do a Win2k install by installing a CD, attaching a network cable and powering up. About 90 minutes later is a full standard 2k install, including all the apps and service patches and whatnot we've standardized on. If we had exact hardware across the board we could Ghost it even faster.
That $300 labour charge is only incurred when you have to babysit the install. Hell even my Slackware-based firewall installs go in in about 15 minutes now because I use custom tagfiles and a few of my home-rolled packages.
Lines like this One of those clients, Dell, has prodded Quanta to move more of its production to mainland China, where labor and other costs are much lower. in the article are pretty worrying. Anyone who has read "No Logo" by Naomi Klein will tell you that the outsourcing of piecework like this to countries with bad human rights records increases the problem of sweatshop labour.
China in particular has a bad reputation for this sort of thing, abusing both its own people and those of nearby countries that it lays claim to (Tibet for instance). Companies like Quanta in the article are the "acceptable face" of this work. They hire subcontractors who in turn hire their own subcontractors, hiding the problem from their parent companies. However if Dell are asking Quanta to move production to China, I would speculate that they almost definitely know what the end result will be.
A little planning goes a long way...
At "The Register" (circa early 99)
"Everyone knows that Taiwanese companies make notebooks for big companies like IBM, Compaq, Dell and HP. But which company makes what? Here's the OEM list, courtesy of a Taiwanese wire. Quanta makes Gateway, Dell, IBM, Apple and Siemens products. Acer makes IBM and Hitachi products. Inventec makes Compaq notebooks. Compal makes Dell and HP notebooks. Arima makes Compaq notebooks. Twinhead manufactures for HP and Winbook. Clevo makes Hitachi notebooks. Mitac manufactures for Sharp. GVC manufactures for Siemens, Micron, Apple and Packard Bell. And FIC manufactures for NEC and Packard Bell. ® According to the survey, total notebook from the small (240 miles long) island amounted to 5,420,000 in 1998."
Personally, I don't pay enough attention to hardware to know off the top of my head what the best place to get a motherboard, CPU, graphics card, memory, etc are. I'm sure I could figure it out, but it would take more time than I'd be willing to spend, for a very paltry return. On top of that, I'd have no warranty, no support from the manufacturer, no way of knowing whether some of the parts I installed are faulty, and I'd get a generic, ugly PC.
Dell, Compaq, Apple, et al make their money on design. They build integrated systems that are more than the sum of their parts. Personally, I'm not impressed with what most PC companies produce, which is why I bought an iBook, but if I were going to buy a PC, I'd be willing to spend an extra $50-$100 for a warranty, tech support, and a better design than I could come up with on my own.
This probably supports your point, but I can't resist nit-picking just a little. Magna does complete vehicles (including design), although these are primarily OEM'd to other companies as well as their parts are.
You're right about it being lucrative to just make the parts.
Christopher
Mozilla
While I buy the argument that you're paying for a name if you're buying an Inspiron or Presario instead of a nameless econo-box that Quanta could build and sell on the cheap, but taht's not the case with Apple.
Because Apple's proprietary, no outside manufacturer could make Apple-compatable boxes and undersell Apple, not Quanta or anybody.
Basically, Dell and Compaq haven't done much to evolve the actual circuits inside the box, so it really is just a label slapped on the outside. Apple designed the computing architecture of their machines, and you're buying that design, the ROMs, and the OS.
That's a lot more than a nameplate, and something that Quanta couldn't turn around and undercut Apple on...
Kevin Fox
Have you used Dell support recently? I had heard that they recently laid off a lot of their support staff. (It may have been a /. source, so don't believe this if you don't know that it's true.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I bought my first PC from Quanta back in 1994 and it is still running with mostly original parts. They were inexpensive but certainly didn't create junk. I wouldn't be too upset getting their parts under another label.
And you sound like some geek who just got his A+ and is still excited about finding his first HDD controller failure. Just because you know how to service a computer yourself doesn't mean it's a good idea. I'd rather pay Dell to worry about that piddly crap so I can spend my time working on interesting things instead of wiggling cables and running repetetive diagnostics. My company would rather pay Dell than have me doing it too, for good reason--by the time I've spent a couple hours fiddling with a hardware issue, I've wasted more in lost productivity and wages than the warranty would have cost. (we won't discuss lost productivity and wages resulting from surfing Slashdot at work ;) )
Hardware was fun when I was new to the field and hadn't seen it a hundred times, and if you're just getting into things (or are just hyped on the 'cool tech' factor and don't understand cost/benefit ratios) I can see where you're at--but it certainly doesn't make sense in every case to try to service the small stuff yourself when there is a warranty available.
No relation to Happy Monkey
The notion that G8 markets should purge manufacturing was once held as an ideal but has, at least for the last five years, been thoroughly debunked. Not all manufacturing is idiot work - consider logistics, cost control, and automation as three aspects of this market which do promote the knowledge economy.
This debate on the pros and cons of manufacturing in the economy is so utterly naive and devoid of hard facts that it really should be shot and left outside. Read any of the adequate books (the most obvious being Fingleton) on this topic that have come out in the last few years and you will see that this debate requires more depth than the simplistic tete-a-tete of /. comments.
HP is not the only "OEM" that puts crummy drives in its rebadged machines. Anything with an eMachines nameplate has some of the worst hard drives on the planet in it. Samsung. Not as crapulous as the legendary JTS but damn close.
.SIG and fax your Congresscritter today!
Most of these rebadged computers have the crappiest parts they can get away with. The beauty of building a PC yourself is that you can actually put sane parts into it.
The problem is with the PHBs who expect a "brand name" on their computers. You might have to do some homework on marketdroid concepts like Return On Investment and making a "Business case" for going the white-box route, but I am confident that a business case can indeed be made for building you own machines or finding a trustworthy screwdriver shop and having them build a whole bunch of computers to your very exacting specifications. If you trust the screwdriver shop to come up with a spec themselves they will use the cheapest parts they can get away with, and you are back in the same place you were with rebadged crappy Chi-com computers.
Seriously...there is no reason to get a desktop from a "name brand." If you buy one for yourself you are a fool. If your PHB demands them it's up to you to educate him/her about the problems of "name brand" computers. Besides, if you build it yourself, you can fix it yourself. That's the best argument for beige boxen I can think of.
Then again if CBDTPA (The evil bill formerly known as SSSCA and commonly called the "Hollings/Disney Act") passes, "name brand" crappy computers with "digital rights management" boobytraps will be all you can buy legally in the US. Check my
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
but you're buying upgradeability that just isn't there in a Compaq, an IBM or a Dell.
I buy dells because they are upgradable. The desktop machines all pretty much use standard PC architecture (no propritary crap or soidered on chips like the junk Compaq puts out).
As for laptops, It can be a bit hard to find upgrades for some no name clone. I used to have one, and when I tried to put new memory in it, I discovered nobody made it. At least with a company like Dell I know I can get parts from either Dell itself or a number of aftermarket suppliers.
There are lots of reasons not to buy a name brand, the number one being price, but upgradability is not one of them.
The Internet is generally stupid
One problem... MS licencing. Based on a recent attempt at purchasing 50 machines from Dell, they refused to sell them with a site licence, or OS-less so we could purchase our own licence. XP is really piddly 'bout licences.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
I think you are missing the point, the person you replied to was talking about the labor costs involved in building computers _from_scratch_ and in house instead of using an OEM like Dell. That means you buy 20 computer cases, 20 motherboards, 20 power supplies, 20 CPUs, 20 sticks of RAM, etc. I doubt that you would save much money, if any, trying to build normal desktop computers in house. disc imaging tools such as ghost don't have anything to do building a computer from scratch.
disc imaging tools such as ghost don't have anything to do building a computer from scratch.
I think it is you who is missing the point.
How long does it take you to assemble a computer? About 20 minutes, tops? Thought so. Now how long does it take you to take that fresh Win2k install and run over to windowsupdate.com a half dozen times, rebooting after every one? Now install Office, Citrix, the in-house apps, set up the email software, grab the templates, etc.? Thought so. The time wasted is in software installation, not physical computer assembly. Buying a computer from Dell or building one from off the shelf parts is inconsequential.
Yeah. AFTER I responded. :(
:)
I laughed so hard I couldn't respond
For the record, Jamaica dose produce the best wead (Cambodia also tries to claim that title) but it's still ilegal hear. Even more so than in the US.
I.e. MDs have truble trying to priscribe Ganja for cancer patients.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Not paying for warranty. Saving on opportunity cost.
;).
;) ). That is if Dell is reliable. If it isn't reliable it means that someone is wasting a lot of expensive time waiting for a replacement computer. That is why reliability should be a high priority.
Say Joe an employee of your company knows how to assemble AND fix computers.
But how much does Joe _earn_the_company_ per hour doing his job? Say Joe is a programmer/consultant/lawyer/engineer and not reading Slashdot all the time
How long does it take for Joe to get all the parts and assemble them into computers?
Work it all out and you'll probably find that buying a Dell/etc isn't that expensive (or that Joe isn't worth that much to the company
Maybe Joe builds his own computer for a hobby coz it's fun. But that doesn't mean Joe should do it at work.
So far the brand servers I've used have been ok - HP, Dell. No DOAs. Whereas for HP desktops it was like 1/7 DOAs. For off the shelf clones (we have those here - can buy beige boxes prebuilt) it was 1/3 yep one in three dead. Sure there are warranties, but you're buying them to use them, not to send them back and forth for weeks. I figure the brands test all their servers shipped but not all their desktops.
It actually takes longer than 20 minutes if you think about it.
Getting the parts takes a lot longer. Then when the parts turn out to be DoA I have to send them back.
When I built my own computer (for my own use), I had to replace the video card after spending hours thinking it some windows/driver issue - thing is it worked for VGA and not other modes. I could only get a replacement the following week because I wasn't free - other things to do (which is exactly the point).
So far I haven't needed to send _servers_ back.
Now if your job was to build computers for the company then that's different. But I figure they're not paying you the bucks to do that, you're more useful doing other things.
Strangely enough, I didn't. Support and maintance. I'll be clearer: we're an R&D shop where all the users have to customised installs to one degree or another anyway. Oh, we're not supposed to, we're all supposed to be running NT 4.0 SP 6a, and a few approved apps, but the only trouble with that is that if we stuck to the approved list, we'd be utterly unable to do our jobs, and we'd fold within a month.
Our IS guys know this, and there's a tacit agreement of "Don't ask, don't tell," apart from the irregular software audits. My issue with this is that it's completely farcical. We (development) have to go out of our way to pretend that we can do our job with the corporate approved boxen, which is totally untrue. But nobody in management will actually bitchslap IS and get them to approve what we really need, because that would involve making a decision, and the best way to be wrong is to take a stand, right?
I'm not claiming that this is a common situation, just that it's best to consider the source of any opinion about name brand boxen. They're great for IS, but what's great for IS isn't necessarily what's actually needed by the users.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It actually takes longer than 20 minutes if you think about it.
I did think about it. Bad hardware can happen on brand-names, too, and you're still out the time to get it replaced. Week-long delays happen with brand-names, too. I fail to see how this is a non-brand-name problem.
I stand behind my time of 20 minutes; if you've got all the hardware and none of it's bad (not that hard to do, really, but sometimes you get screwed), it takes no longer than twenty minutes to get the hardware into the case and get the screws done up.
heh, the point you seem to be missing is that there are two issues: the physical assembly of the computer in-house and then the "software assembly" if you will. I think that everyone including myself agrees that software assembly costs nothing in terms of time. The time spent is all in the assembly and, as someone already mentioned, obtaining/purchasing the parts and dealing with warranties/returns to all kinds of different sources. The reason very few businesses build normal computers in house is because they can't save any money doing it..
Are you sure it isn't going to be on the first of April? :-)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.