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Dell or HP for Small Business?
fruitbane asks: "I work for a medium-sized non-profit, approximately 50 full-time users and 100 desktop PCs. We're redoing all our technology plans and budgeting; that means it's time to pick vendors/brands and stick to them, something we haven't reliably done in the past. Sites like Consumer Reports review various PCs and manufacturers for home users. Are there any comprehensive reviews or advice sources for those trying to determine the best vendor/manufacturer for small business desktops and laptops?"
How about finding a local computer guy that will help you out?
As a small business computer consultant and a computer repair technician, I think the issue will be more about who can help you with the inevitable problems that will occur when you use the technology in your workplace. Everyone will have their preferences, I know that at our office, we recommend Acer notebook computers and desktops, and our users seem to be happy with the advice. (Incidentally, Acer is #1 in Notebook Computers in Canada, where our office is located).
For us, the important thing is not so much the brand of computers, as each consultant will have his or her own preferences in this area. The key is the business relationship between the person who is fixing your computer and the vendor. As an Acer Authorized Dealer who also has a service relationship, we are often able to order in parts to the store to fix the client computer systems when there are issues. This is quite different from many other computer stores where they may sell the computer to you, but have to send you right back to HP or Toshiba or wherever else for service. As for Dell, the direct sales approach offered by the company means that there is rarely a reliable channel for local support for your hardware, relying instead on centralized phone support that is not always with the same person.
My opinion is that nothing beat having a local reseller to call for service that knows your business and knows your network and knows your hardware, which can help you with your issues and fix your problems.
These are the good old days you'll be telling your children about. Make them worthwhile.
Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.
1) What are your goals. Are they to save money?
2) Do you truly believe you will need "Gold/Platinum" support?
3) Can we get by without some of the big guys? (Dell/HP/etc.)
4) Is there room for savings/alternatives? (Dotproject vs. MS Project... Surgemail vs. Exchange + Outlook)
For 50 users, I'll give you a summary of what I worked with at one point a while back... Computers were a combo of Gateway and Acers we purchased off an auction lot. Most were from a business that went under. Minus HD's... We spent about $100.00 each for about 70 machines. Disks? We brought them in a lot as well. Servers, we purchased our own 1 Sun Netra 1 280r off of eBay for databases. Total cost about 500.00 for the servers. We purchased a brand new 2U server from Tiger and slapped on Linux for LAMP stuff and used SugarCRM, Surgemail, and Dotproject. Surgemail itself saved us big bucks from having to be scammed into using MS Exchange, etc.. Dotproject saved us from buying Project Server which we would have needed for what we needed to do. At first project managers didn't like it, but they also had Project on their personal machines anyway... They got over it. Project + Exchange for that SoHo (3 offices 70 or so people) would have been in excess of about 40k. (remember... seats, etc.). We ran NFS, Samba, and a couple of other things which were transparent to the layfolk. Bottom line we spent under 20k setting it up. Our most expensive purchases were Netscreen's to keep things secured (VPNs). Those cost us about 3k each.
Infiltrated dot Net
IMO, you could get a sweet deal with a long warranty if you buy from a local PC store. Not like BestBuy, or any other boxy-store, but like a smaller business. You'll help grow the local economy, and you'll never have to worry about shipping issues. Plus, you could hand-pick every piece of hardware in the machines.
If you aren't up to that, go for Dell for the desktops, and go for Lenovo ThinkPads if you have the extra money for some. Otherwise go Latitude for the laptops too.
How's Lenovo (owner of IBM's former PC division for those who don't know) hold up nowdays? I've been hearing great things about the ThinkPads (as always), but I've been wondering about their desktops, and the 3000 series (consumer-line) notebooks. Do they share the same reputation as the ThinkPads? First-hand experience welcome
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
I saw someone else mentioned that they would go with a local reseller. While that's ok, I say go a step further and support a local builder who will build it from the metal up. Unless you're going for the absolute bottom-of-the-line, then the local guys usuly can get close to or even beat The Big Guys' prices. And, in my book, the local's reliability and support can't even be touched by Dell et all. Unless you LIKE speaking to call center drone #9487 from the Philippines who isn't even ALLOWED to deviate from their script and whose solution to everything is to wipe and reinstall windows. Or unless you LIKE your computers to explode.
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Later my heart turned into the crack in my pipe.
May YOU life long and prosper.
Once upon a time you'd buy from the biggest companies for service and reliability, and avoid small operators because of the hard time they'd give you.
That's all changed. HP are now heavily outsourced with increased breakdowns from PC's made in China (which, lets face it, never understood 'Quality'). HP have outsourced customer support to India. If you do have a problem, you'll have to argue with an arrogant call center operator who has been told he holds all the cards and that you are at his mercy. The company doesn't give a damn about quality or customer support.
Another poster suggested the local guy. I'd concur. The most important part of the PC is the motherboard (ASUS have a good name as a Taiwanese supplier who 'got' quality), HDD from Seagate or another reputable HDD manufacturer (fortunately most of the bad ones like IBM have been driven out of the business). Using a local guy you can get your own PCs built that'll be far better than any of the cost-cut, outsourced crap you'll get from the Multinationals. These days smaller companies have a much better grasp on quality and reputation. You'll also be supporting your community and country.
Since there appears to be some trouble with the question, let me clarify. We already have a lot of machines in use. Most of them are Dell, but not all of them. Dell's once great quality and support is now, according to consumer sources (and my own experience with previous workplaces), no better than anyone else's. How does an IT department reliably evaluate the big vendors to determine who's going to go the necessary distance and be a good business partner, especially for a smaller customer?
This doesn't rule out the smaller, local sources, but there can be a longevity issue there, as well as priority. Who says he can be there tomorrow with a replacement part in hand to get you back up and running? Yes, we're trying to save money, but staff time is more expensive than any single technology decision, so Linux and used computers are really not the way to go. We have adequate funding to get what we need, but we have to spend that funding wisely. When trying to standardize the products one uses, for ease of ordering, support, and keeping consumables in stock, making a bad decision can really set back the entire institution. And for that matter, when ordering 100 - 120 computers every 4 year cycle, paying an extra $50-$100 per computer can be worth it if you know you will get reliable, timely, and quality support for a quality product in return.
But how do you predict?
And to the individual who stated technology cycles every 3 years, I think that's a wonderful ideal. On a practical level, however, especially where smaller places with tighter budgets are concerned, a 4 year cycle makes more sense. Also makes it more worth investing a little extra up front.
I provide end user support to a government enterprise running about 1800 PCs. We have a mix of roughly 50/50 Dells and Gateways. I have spent WAY more time on the phone with Dell getting replacement parts, and I have to prove that I have tried everything on their scripts before they will send the parts. Gateway sends out replacements on pretty much a "no questions asked" basis, but I have only had to do that a couple times in two years. I have no idea how our management's purchasing decisions are made, but once the boxes are onsite I would much rather see Gateway.
It's all about hardware support.
So try to focus as much as possible on getting the SAME model for everything that is possible (without under-powering something).
Then get a couple of extra hard drives and a spare machine. In case of disaster, just drop in the spare machine or a replacement hard drive.
Otherwise, get on the phone and talk to the vendors about getting a 4 year, overnight replacement warranty on your hardware. Shop around. See what prices you're quoted.
Local sites will PROBABLY not be able to provide that kind of support. That requires a warehouse where you can leave extra parts. So don't expect that. Understand that you'll be storing your own emergency replacements AND spending the weekend getting the replacement server up and running after a disaster. You'll save money up-front AND maybe get some good-will. But you're trading your time for those savings.
If you keep churning the technology on a 3 year basis, you should be good.
If you're looking at 4 years, you're running a bigger risk. It depends upon what you're comfortable with. Hardware can fail at any time.
Dell will make your machine THE WAY YOU WANT IT exactly. HP has a selection of items and configurations. I found this out the hard way... that is the sales rep didn't explain it to me until AFTER I received a laptop with the wrong configuration. I was really surprised because I was accustomed to Dell's custom configurations.
I think Lenovo is worth investigating. They feel more durable than either HP or Dell too.
Your local company may be able to build a standup machine, but can they build them in the same quantities that the multinationals would? Can those machines be delivered on the timetable that the company has set forward?
I'm not arguing against buying local, but a local business may not be able to handle the volume of a 100 pc + order, and that is a factor that the company will need to take into account.
My Sysadmin Blog
with 50~100 computers.. you can probably have someone on staff that knows a bit about computers... for a 2000~ish bucks you can then get them registered for dell's warrenty parts direct program. Once they are part of the program, they can order parts directly from dell, never haveing to deal with 'phone support'. its an invaluble tool if you need uptime and have someone that knows a bit about comptuers and can use a screwdriver!
Of course you need to check them out before you buy them, have a trusted referral or ideally have been buying from them for several years. Their service is light years ahead of the Multinationals. These guys need customers. 'Chandler' who wants 'to provide you with Excellent Service' from some outsourced HP call center on the other hand doesn't care if you live or die.
If you're talking very large orders, say a few thousand PCs, there's are medium-sized businesses who can integrate it for you on a contract. I'd trust an ASUS Motherboard far more than whatever the hell is inside a HP or Dell this week.
--that's the best I can do. I worked for a small builder who could do 25 a normal 8 hour day easy all the time, he was pretty fast at it once he had his technique and shop/benches set up for it. He'd always razz me because he was so much faster, well duh, I did it real part time, he did it daily. I tell you, the slowest part of the whole job doing small mass quantities is unwrapping the components, you get ass deep in packaging materials quickly unless you really take the time to stuff the crap in boxes. Most of the time we didn't care, get em done, then cleanup while watching the ghosting and burn ins go on. Have a bunch of powered screwdrivers handy, all nice and hot and charged up, and trays for the different sized screws.
And man, it pays to have spares of everything, count on some bummer components with an order for one hundred.
I guess what I am saying is, 100 units isn't that huge a task given a week lead time for the order, even for one guy. He'll be making some coin there so the incentive to do it and get it done will be there.
> it's time to pick vendors/brands and stick to them,
No, it's time to pick vendors/brands now, and next time around re-assess whether they're going to count on your inertia to pay them over the odds for an inferior/more highly priced solution.
Some support is outsourced to India. Much is right here in the US and Europe. I work for a sub-contractor to HP that provides support to European GE employees (specifically, for desktop PC issues), and we are located right here in the US of A. My team handles the remote resolves for the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK. Our Dublin team handles remote resolves for Sweden, Norway, France and Italy. But the reality is that the situation is far more complex then a simple statement such as "HP outsources their support to India".
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
Fair enough. I just wasn't sure if local shops could handle that volume.
The good new, though, is that the machines are built with all off-the-shelf components, so if something breaks, it is easy to fix or replace.
My Sysadmin Blog
HP for servers. Always. Sun has bid a few times, but they are consistently (and drastically) higher priced. The HP kit is rock solid!
Dell for desktops. I hear some say to buy local -- I don't like that. Locals keep changing shit up. You may get one motherboard one day, and a different one another day. Do you really have time to corral the local boys who throw these boxes together from the cheapest rickshaw parts they can find? I sure don't. Now, Dell does get stuff from the lowest bidder as well, but at least with Dell I know that my configuration will not change. I'll get the same config and the same install CD will work with them regardless of any internal changes. It's a whole hell of a lot less headache! (I used to recommend whitebox as well until I got into a Director of IT position... Dude, trust me; you really do NOT want to have to deal with crappy local integrators EVER.)
I use OpenBSD for firewalls. They work great with our OC3.
I use HP ProCurve for networking. We do have some Netgears to support our office here and there.
I use EMC for SAN.
I use Qlogic for storage fabrics and HBAs.
The best vendor to choose for your hardware purchases and support is the vendor with which you have an effective understanding of each other thru well understood communication. If your organization's communications strength is papaerwork (**coughlawyers**), use a vendor who functions effectively thru paperwork. If your company has a constantly changing environment, work with a vendor which has the required flexibility to meet your constantly changing requirements.
The computer systems you build provide muliptle methods for managing the business of tech support. I suggest you start using those computer systems more effectively.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
...not to mention other decent quality components. I'm not a huge fan, since I prefer to build most of my personal machines, but the HP Media Center PC I bought for my wife is damn soild really. So has every other HP PC I've owned over the many years. I found a much higher failure rate with Compaq personally, so maybe that's where you're getting your impression.
Make sure you spend the extra ~$100 for gold support (= US based and empowered to actually get shit done) from Dell.
Personally and professionally, I buy from Dell.
Their PowerEdge servers are solid. I've had hundreds, maybe over a thousand, in service over the years and haven't experienced too many problems -- certainly nothing out of the ordinary.
Their Latitude laptops are pretty nice. Maybe not the nicest laptop in the world, all of mine have lasted at least three or four years, not including time spent in friend's and family's hands after I give them away. In service in the corporate environment, again, I've had very few issues.
In terms of service, I've never been disappointed. With Gold support, you get excellent service, IMHO. It does cost a lot, so be sure you need it first. But even with the lowest form of support, I've had decent experiences. Does it take longer to get ahold of someone? Of course. Do I have to wait longer for parts? Yup. But that's what I paid for, and it has never been excessive.
Anyhow, that's my short answer.
robert
Seriously. The systems are exactly custom-ordered, they have better online documentation (including tear-down instructions for field replacement) and there hasn't been any hardware problems as of late.
HP, however, has a ton of problems it needs to resolve. It's site is counter-intuitive, both on buying a system and getting support for whatever you have. It's offerings are very fixed, even after it borged Compaq. Some offerings have variations that are hard to find, and some even harder to find support to. I hear the customer service isn't worth the phone call.
I'm not sure about Lenovo, since they're owned by the Chinese government. Gateway I haven't heard from, but depending on how hard you're on laptops, maybe Panasonic?
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
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It makes a lot of sense to provide customer support in the country of purchase, or at least one that understands the cultural nuances of the customer. In Australia support is run out of India. The customer service is plain obnoxious. Expect to get snapped at and lied too, and watch them violate local consumer law.
Dell learned the folly of this few years ago, and to their credit pulled out, only to have HP blunder on and make the same mistakes a few years later.
One key point with many locals is they don't necessarily build their own machines; a lot of them will go through a whitebox vendor like Equus or Columbus Micro, among others. Having dealt with both of them, I can offer the following advice:
1. Avoid Equus. Their servers are crap. I've spent the past six months doing little but rebuilding ones that lost their RAID controllers and hard drives due to poor ventilation. Also, their PCs are substandard as well, with poor fit & finish (their buttons would stick, onboard network card would flake out, etc.).
2. Columbus Micro is okay as long as you're not in a hurry. This makes them decent for cheap PCs, but servers are a different matter. They like to ship everything ground by default, which means that, unless you have some spare equipment lying around, you're looking at serious downtime on the server side.
Both just put together Intel boxes - Intel motherboards, Intel RAID cards (rebranded LSI, in other words), etc. etc. etc. You get what you pay for. I have had decent luck with Supermicros, but haven't seen a new one in a couple of years.
There's a notebook review by Smallbiztechnology.com here - http://www.smallbiztechnology.com/notebook
Ramon Ray, analyst @ editor, Smallbiztechnology.com
I've worked for several small companies in the same situation, and have always been dismissed by HP sales as too small. Mind you, they've never outright said that they wouldn't help us, but by not responding to inquiries, not bidding on jobs, and never sending sales reps HP made it more than clear that unless we were a Fortune 1000 company, they weren't interested.
While Dell may have their share of crap models (latitude anyone?), their service and sales departments have always been extremely responsive. One of our tape libraries broke on a Friday afternoon, and a Dell tech arrived within the hour and stayed until nearly midnight fixing the problem. Granted this is just anectodal, what did you expect from a random Slashdot post?
Just kidding...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
I work for a state government agency (where the skill level ranges from very-entry level to superb).. We've had HP's, Dell's, Gateways, and others.. Our current desktop machines (~2000) are a mix of Dell's and Gateway. Servers are almost exclusively Dell's. We've stuck with Dell servers, because thier quality and support (especially support.. GOLD support) has been great. On the desktop side, Dell used to be pretty good, but has seemed to go down hill in the past year or 18 months.. We're supposed to go directly to level 2 support, to avoid to the brain-dead-database-reading-monkeys.. but that doesn't happen anymore.. takes an hour just to get a CD drive replaced. Gateway isn't as good as Dell *USED* to be, but they are pretty consistant.. They do go thru some of the asnine questions when trying to get stuff replaced.. but its still pretty fast. One thing to consider is if you are getting on-site tech support.. talk to companies near you.. Most of the big companies contract out for on-site service (i.e. Unisys, etc).. and sometimes they just suck.. Either they'll never make service calls in the time window given, or they'll come ill-prepared with parts, etc.. YMMV, as even in my agency, it varies highly depening on where in the state the service is occuring. As for the quality of the computer itself.. its all the same stuff anyways.. same chipset motherboards.. same hard OEM hard drives, etc..
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Gateway? Their support sucks unless they've changed since I last had a Gateway PC. And their hardware stinks too. I bought two PCs from Gateway for myself and the first had the motherboard and hdd die in the first year. The second one, a laptop, had the LCD crack after I had it only a couple of months and even though I got the extended service plan the LCD still wasn't covered. The first one, because Windows kept crashing tech support had me reinstall Windows a few tymes. And everytime I called tech support after giving them the serial number the first question they'd ask was if anything had been installed, hardware or software. If I said "yes" they'd say they didn't cover that, they wouldn't even try to see what the problem was, all they'd say was in order to get support I'd have to reinstall the OS without installing anything else. Each tyme I did I still had the same problems, such as the same 0E errs or the hdd not working.
FalconShould there be a Law?
it's already outlasted an apple laptop a friend bought at about the same time.
I've bought 4 new, well really 3 and a factory remanufactered one, Windows PCs and of them only one did not have any hardware troubles in the first year I had them. On the other hand I've also bought 2 used Macs and they both lasted longer than the PCs did. The first Mac I got was an SE30 in 1992. It lasted without problems until 2000, when the floppy drive died. The second's a Powermac 7300/200 I got in 2000, a few months after the the first one died. It lasted until early 2006 when it refused to bootup. The first one I used for 8 years and the second for 6 years.
Because of my experiences with Macs and PCs, and because MS wants to treat it's customers like criminals, I've decided to switch entirely to Linux and Macs. Several months ago I got a new PC with Linux preinstalled, which I'll setup as a server, and for a laptop I plan on getting a Macbook Pro. Unless and until MS gets rid of it's requirements for Activation and the spyware if I can at all avoid it I will never again buy anything with Windows on it. Nor will I get Office.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Strictly from a support view, I would recommend Dell. Based primarily on my current experience with HP and past experience with Dell. I currently also work for a non-profit, albeit a much larger one. We administrator about 275 servers for school data centers across all of Washington State. I have to call HP support several times a week, and every time I dread it. I get the run around from the 'techs', I am regularly told that our servers are 'not under any warrenty' (I tell them the 300K a month we spend assures me that they are - and usually have to talk to a manger), and of course the language barrier is awful (I believe they are in Costa Rica). Oh and did I mention the voice activated call routing system? That sucks too. It's so NOT fun to have to repeat 'Proliant running Microsoft' out loud into the phone 10 times just to get a human on the phone. Keep in mind we have the *highest* support level offered by HP.
At my last job, I ran a much, much smaller datacenter with only about 6 Dell servers (I use the term data center loosely). There we had what Dell called 'Gold level support'. The fact that I usually spoke with native English speakers was awesome all by itself. But I could usually get a tech on site much faster, and with much less hassle. And we got a direct line to Tier II support.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Check Ed Foster's Gripelog || The Reader Advocate to discover which companies are being abusive.
However, on 2007-05-19 at 22:58 PM PDT his web site seems not to be functioning.
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Ive just got to chime in here quick as I've been involved in many small/medium sized businesses and non-profits. In the end, HP/Dell/Ibm/whatever it doesn't matter who made the system or whats in the box. A computer is a computer to the users of the technology. That said...
I suggest when purchasing PCs for small/medium sized business... "Who will give you the best financing/terms/price" Lets face it, being a small business is tough...you need all the financial breaks you can get. You have some power to bargain if credit is good, order size, etc... Don't forget that its not always about the hardware. Thanks.
Well I'd suggest your problem is not choosing between two different brands of conventional computers.
.15 per KWH for carbon based generation to the price of solar electric generation, which is currently perhaps $.40 to $1.20 per KWH, When electricity is priced as if it were solar electricity, low energy computers quickly become the lower total lifetime cost device.
The answer to "what kind of new computer?" is "It must be low energy consumption now."
The first point I would suggest is: Now is the time to begin aggressively moving to low energy consumption computing for general purpose office machines.
The conventional mass market machinery that I see is not dramatically better than my 700 mhz 1998 Athlon. My computer burns 176 watts ( about 90 watts for the CRT monitor, and 90 watts for the cpu with 2 disk drives, My machine also wastes 4 minutes starting ).
The typical $800 business box with a CPU running at 2% load for 99% of every 8 to 10 hour workday is way too much energy consumption for typical office work.
One way of arguing for low energy computers is look at the total cost of the electricity used over the lifetime of the computer. Then reprice the electricity from $
The problem is to deliver a way of doing the work of your organization with dramatically lower carbon burden. If you set a goal of replacing individual machines with machines that use 1/3 to 1/5 the energy of present office machines you will be moving towards a low energy business profile that will look good for 5 to 7 years.
Energy reductions in the 20% to 33% range mean you need cutting edge low energy systems. "Cutting edge" means as consumers we need quality comparative reviews. Some low energy systems may not be right, other configurations may do what is needed elegantly.
Right now, low energy office computing is practical. For instance there is the Wyse terminal server client product that I think burns around 35 watts with a display. Lashups like a gumstix, an LCD, a keyboard, and a mouse are almost office computers in the 5 to 20 watt range.
Don't pick a vendor, pick particular models and standardize on them for the life of that model. There are several benefits to this:
1. You can create a Norton Ghost install image so that deploying a new machine is easy.
2. Joe doesn't get upset because Suzy has a better PC.
3. When its time to buy the next model (after a couple years you'll typically have 2 or 3 in production at once) you can compete the major vendors for the best price and hardware.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
If you go Dell make sure you go lattitude for laptops and optiplex for PC's, and get the full 3 year warrenty (accidental on laptops). the 3 year warrenty is worth it's price, esp on displays - a laptop display will cost £600 to replace if it gets cracked.
The onsite warranty for the 'home' range isn't as good and harder to get someone out to fix.
For me the extended warrenty is the big selling point over HP.
HP? Dell? Avoid, avoid, avoid.
Find a small or medium sized vendor, preferably headquartered in your area, that carries a good small-name brand, store brand, or whitebox lineup. Ideally you want systems composed entirely of bog-standard interchangeable off-the-shelf hardware components.
In Ohio, for example, there's an outfit called Microcenter, with locations in Columbus and Cleveland. They carry big-name computers like HP and so forth, but they also carry a whitebox brand called PowerSpec. After I discovered this brand we quit buying Dell and HP and so forth where I work.
I got tired of having a computer that's six months out of warrantee have a part go bad (a CD-ROM drive, say) and not being able to replace the part because it was non-standard in some way (e.g., designed to fit behind a non-standard case front). All the big international brands pull those sorts of schenanighans, for no good reason, and it leaves you with computers you can't service the minute they're out of warrantee and therefore must replace entirely when even a cheap component dies. Oops, I can't replace the power supply because it has a special connector for that weird fan in the front of the case. Oops, there's a case fan making a racket and I can't replace it because it has a non-standard mounting form factor. These are the sort of unpleasant surprises you can expect with the big brands. Usually you discover it about two months after the warrantee expires.
Do yourself a favor. Avoid the big international brands that like to have a new non-standard "feature" for each model line. Instead find a brand that uses 100% standard off-the-shelf components.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I certainly haven't had any problems with the service offered by Dell - but then again we do have the Gold support etc. If you wanted to do some more research yourself you could try buying a PC from several places and seeing yourself what the level of service they provided was - or perhaps asking if they could put you in touch with another customer to get a reference.
I disagree with the comments from people suggesting going with a local "white box" vendor. With Dell and others you can purchase machines for 2 years knowing that the specification will be exactly the same, and that you'll be able to get parts for them for several years after that. The benefits you can get from this in terms of automated builds, consistent environments and simplified inventories shouldn't be underestimated.
One other thing, which I'm suprised hasn't been mentioned elsewhere (that I can see) is the recent Dell decision to ship machines with Ubuntu on. While I wouldn't advocate making a technological business decision based on "good will" you might feel that the promise of good hardware support in future should you ever want to move them to Linux was worth considering.
I'll have to second the recommendation for Dell. However, there are a few caeats: First, don't buy their consumer hardware, go with Latitude notebooks and Optiplex desktops. Second, make sure that you get the right support and warranty option for your needs, if you take too cheap an option, you'll end up fighting some indian (for germany that's apparently someone form the czech republic) support drone over every single screw and rubber foot you might need, even for the business machines, but if you get the right level of support, it's not outsourced, and the people on the hotline will only try to make sure that the part (and/or technician) they are sending out will actually fix your problem, they'll try to reproduce any problems you encounter on their own test servers (even with debian, which isn't officially supported), and they will actually call you back.
Yeah Dell Period, for us too.
I don't know if things have changed with HP but I had an experience some years ago with HP.com that absolutely stunned me.
About 5 years or so ago we bought a HP tape backup library/changer new. 11 months after the manufacture date of the drive I went up on HP.com looking for the part # for the rack mounting kit for the drive and I couldn't find any info.After contacting someone at HP I was directed to the right location on the site. The reason I had difficulties finding the information was that the drive was considered end of life. I was told by HP that within 8 months information about the drive would disappear from their site since it was end of life.
This absolutely shocked me. We had IBM servers approaching 10 years of age and I could go up on IBM's site and get part #s and documentation for. But a 1 year old HP tape drive, good luck!
That just never made any sense to me, HD space wasn't that expensive.
Dell's Gold support sucks compared to most other vendors. I don't have recent experience with their desktop support but have had to deal a lot with their servers over the last 2 years. I don't do day to day sysadmin stuff anymore as I focus on DR/backups but I see all of the mess my customer goes through to get Dell to fix problems. If its not an obvious issue like HDD failure then it may takes days or weeks to fix issues. Their first response to anything other than blatant hardware failure is to update the firmware and BIOS. They would rather spend days and weeks on the phone gathering logs instead of sending out a technician (who when does show up, is only trained in hardware swapping, no clue on how to do anything at the OS level) or running specialized diagnostic software. I'm constantly having to run full server restores of Dell systems due to complete hardware failure or data corruption.
HP on the other hand has caused very little trouble. The customer standardized on HP desktops just as I started working onsite in their office and am quite impressed with their desktop line. Their servers also very rarely have issues. I've only had to call support for the HP-UX and HP based Linux machines I'm responsible for a couple times, but every time I have it has been a major ordeal to get a case opened. They've told me I couldn't open a case with just the company name and serial number of the unit, despite Platinum support. They made us track down our support contract # or they wouldn't talk to me. WTF? Once they opened the case though the folks on the other end of the phone were very knowledgeable. They sent engineers onsite right away. Not technicians who came out to swap hardware, but an engineer to help diag the problem.
Dell really screams "consumer level" to me. HP is about business systems. On the flipside though HP's consumer level desktops are crap.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
That's what I told the admin of our finance network when she started getting in Dell desktops.
Three years later she was saying "You were right". Every model was a unique design, the motherboards, power supply connectors, cases, and everything was designed to force you to replace the computer when you needed to upgrade, to force you to go to Dell for support, and when the warranty runs out you're out of luck.
HP? The HP desktops I've seen have been bog standard ATX cases and motherboards, maintainable and upgradable without HP's help. Much better value.
That $309 configuration includes 512MB of RAM and a DVD-ROM drive (no writable optical drive at all!). Also, the graphics is "integrated". These are the systems that give Dell a bad name, because they run Windows really slowly. At least it doesn't have a Celeron.
If you are going to narrow it down between Dell and HP, I'd recommend HP. HP has a very long history of business class machines between its own HP-UX servers and the former Compaq company on the Wintel side. Despite what others may say, it isn't just about support. HP's machines are engineered better from the start, so you don't need to call support as often. The technical knowledge level of both phone support and field support techs/engineers who come onsite are also a lot better than Dell's when you do need their help. Dell just isn't a mature company when it comes to enterprise support.
Whatever vendor you go with, always opt for the extra support contract.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
I would recommend checking out the Supermicro brand of servers, I find they are more reliable then your brand name types.
The company I work for has several hundred of these servers and have yet to have a single server fail over a two year period.
I've had a couple of Acer monitors, and they were the worst. They all failed quickly and in ways I didn't even know LCD panels could fail.
Notice how I said HP for servers, and not Dell. There was a reason for that.
What's in it for the support guy? Dell and HP and anyone else (Acer, Lenovo, Etc) all do about the same in terms of support. I use both Dell (laptops) and HP (Desktops, printers) and have the same problems and good things to report with both of them.
Not really the issue.
1) How easy will it be for you to reimage one of these puppies? Will Dell/HP supply you with all of the drivers when you build your image or make you hunt?
2) When your lease is up, how bad will it be if you don't return, say, the original boxes, the original keyboards, or the original monitors? (Yes, my corp had that happen - shudder-).
3) What are the IT perks? Will HP or Dell give you access to their training and an opportunity to become a fully-authorized repair person? Comes in handy.
I could go on, but why? What's in it for Y-O-U? The lusers will complain no matter what. The management will be clueless and be looking for their own handouts. It all comes down to you.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
At least for the server side. Having been someone who has deployed about 2,000 servers from Dell, and about 1,000 from HP, I can't stress how much better HP's support model is. Once I started running my own small company (6 employees, 150 servers) I realized almost from day one how impossible it would be for me to profit if I used Dell's hardware. The quality level was fairly low, combined with a cumbersome support organization designed to make it hard to actually get support. Component replacements with Dell are a nightmare, because by default they treat you like an idiot, forcing you to go through a 10 minute script filled with inane tests like "is it plugged in". With HP, I call up HP server support, enter the turbo phrase "Proliant Support For Microsoft" (even though we're a 100% SuSE Linux shop) and tell the tech "I need a new motherboard for this model server, here's the serial # and here's the address to send it to". 4 hours later, i've got a replacement motherboard. The whole call usually takes about 5 minutes including hold time. Beyond better support, and comparable pricing (if you haggle with an HP reseller like CDW, you'll get comparable pricing on equivalent product lines), HP's products are super to Dell's from a management point of view. Dell being just a whitebox reseller that puts a minimal amount of engineering into their servers (enough to claim they're not a whitebox reseller), they just don't have the r&d capabilities that HP has. HP's server management features are second only to Sun's. Their ILO and RILO lines (Integrated Lights Out) featres are awesome. They give you remote serial console access, remote power access, remote sensor reading.. That's their minimal version, it comes for free in all of their Proliant servers.. It also doesn't require an IPMI client (though it supports IPMI) or some broken Java client to give you remote console. You just telnet or ssh into it.
Some support is outsourced to India. Much is right here in the US and Europe.
HP's Indian support only comes online for after-hours calls to their 24/7 support lines. And the nice thing is they are NOT glued to a damn script. I've actually called on a server that had 4-hour parts response at around 1am in the morning and the Indian call center picked up immediately. Even better, we didn't know exactly which hardware component was causing the problem and he said it was beyond him as well, so rather than force us to wait for upper level support to arrive here in the US he had the local parts depot just courier over one of everything that could possibly be causing the problem so we could at least get a leg up on it.
It's things like this that make us a huge fan of HP products even if there are cases where they aren't necessarily any better technically than some other co.
That's why we build our own. Being able to get components from just about anywhere and knowing that there are zero proprietary parts inside is a real nice feeling.
My favorite build right now for office machines is:
Motherboard bundle from MWave (AMD Athlon X2 AM2 3600+, Asus M2NPV-VM, Kingston 2GB DDR2 667MHz, Assembly + Test), Antec Sonata II case, DVD writer, floppy, (2) 250GB HDs running in RAID1. For someone who needs a bit more CPU power, we spend another $100 and upgrade to an Athlon64 X2 5000+ (or thereabouts). I haven't built one in a month or two, so I'm not sure what the base cost is ($550-$700 range). Add in OEM versions of WinXP Pro and Office 2003 Pro for around $435.
We have a standard drive image that we use that just needs sysprep and re-entry of the WinXP key. We've even swiped a user's 2nd HD (out of the RAID1 set) and used it to build or rebuild another user's machine (in cases where our drive image was out of date).
The only semi-proprietary component inside is the Asus motherboard based on the NVIDIA GeForce 6150 chipset. But we could probably get a similar motherboard using that chipset from other manufacturers, or switch to using the Asus M2N-E motherboard and adding in an inexpensive PCIe video card for $45.
(I like the Asus motherboards because they don't have any fans cooling the chipset, it's all passive cooling. Less fans = less things that can go wrong.)
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
YMMV, but the organization for whom I work (about 13,000 users) usually buys from what I would consider to be a medium sized vendor (larger than a mom & pop store but smaller than Dell, HP, etc). There are a few benefits that I've seen to going this route. One is that our machines are shipped with brand name parts inside (Asus mobo, ATI video card, etc). Two is that the support is far better. The company is still small enough that I typically get the same person on the phone each and every time I call for support. They don't run through any scripts or force me to troubleshoot before sending me parts. I will tell them what I want and the parts get shipped out the same day or next. I've gone as far as having them set me up an account in their work order system which I can access online and enter my ticket without evn having to call. It's VERY convenient. In some cases, they will send more parts than necessary (ie, a psu, mobo, ram and video card) for a problem that I may initially think is related to just one of those components, so that I don't have to call and have them ship parts a second time, resulting in more down time. What I'm getting at is that because the company we are dealing with isn't huge and faceless, I am able to build a trusted relationship with their support department, and I can get things fixed without being jerked around. We haven't always gone that route however. We choose our vendor based on a bidding process each time we want to purchase machines. It isn't always the same vendor who wins. Over the years we've had several different vendors, ranging from medium sized like the one I am currently dealing with, to big name brands like Dell. The number of problems with our custom-built-with-name-brand-part machines compared to the Dells that we purchased is huge. Other than a problem we are dealing with right now*, I rarely ever have component failures in our custom machines. The Dells on the other hand were such a support problem that I don't think we will ever buy them again. Almost every single machine we bought eventually choked due to swollen caps on the motherboard. It was like pulling teeth trying to sort out the problem with Dell. There is such a variance in the level of knowledge of their techs that I was hornswaggled. In one instance, the first time I called, the support rep ran me through a number of troubleshooting steps that I had already tried and we eventually terminated the call when no progress was made. When I called back, the conversation went like this: Me: My computer doesn't work Dell: Check the caps on the motherboard, are they swollen? Me: Hey lookie there, yes they are Dell: I'll send a replacement right away To summarize, our medium sized vendor has provided a much higher quality product and far better support than I have seen from Dell. I encourage you to give that route some deep consideration. * One of our recent batches of PC's had a bad batch of power supplies. I believe it was another case of bad capacitors. The vendor went as far as to ship a fleet of replacement power supplies so that when one died, we could take one from the fleet and replace it immediately without having to wait for them to ship a replacement.
In my experience, the business (and I state BUSINESS) machines that HP puts out are always decent. I've had very few problems with them in my experience, both the servers and the desktops. Even though HP seems to have sunk into mediocrity, they have a history of top notch machines for business, from their HP-UX line on down.
Dells are not bad either, but make SURE to buy Optiplex, PowerEdge, or Latitude, and avoid the consumer grade stuff.
I don't understand this...
Call center? Arrogant operator? Local guy?
I run a small company. Not even close to 100 computers. We have our "own" key account manager at Dell. This person has always been from Scandinavia (we are based in Norway). If we have a problem we call our key account manager who then takes care of business. We usually buy silver/gold support (the one which is maximum 4 hour assitance, 24/7).
I've never talked to an arrogant person at Dell customer service. Then one time I really needed some help, my HD on my laptop totally crashed after a flight, I called service and a person came, within 4 hours, and replaced that harddrive. He also brought with him a recovery CD.
Dell has been our primary source for computer equipment since 2001. Server, desktop pcs, laptops, monitors (Dell 30" LCD is just wonderful) and now also TVs (I love the Dell 37" LCD TV).
When our support contracts for old equipment run out, we usually give it away and buy new equipment. My mom is still using an old Dell laptop I've had since 2002.
Just got a two new Dell servers. And they are a breeze to upgrade. Only a week ago I had to open one to insert more memory, an extra HD and an extra Intel dual Gbit ethernet card. Built like a tank, but with easy access to any vital part.
I would never put my trust in a local computer guy. The small computer stores usually don't last more than a few years. Also, most often, their service deals are actually more expensive than say Dell.
No, I don't work at Dell.
I just like the way the do their business.
> I don't understand this... Call center? Arrogant operator? Local guy?
Your (good) experiences are with Dell. I was talking about HP. Dell did try and move their call centers to India a few years ago, but it was a complete disaster so to their credit they pulled out. Support needs to be "culturally sensitive."
> I would never put my trust in a local computer guy.
> The small computer stores usually don't last more than a few years.
> Also, most often, their service deals are actually more expensive than say Dell.
I don't know the scene in Norway, but I'm in Australia and my two 'local guys' have been around for 15 years. They have a good reputation and both do a roaring trade and their service is top notch. Both have multiple branches now (but they never went overboard in expansion either).
I'm a little surprised at the hostility some posters have expressed towards local operators. After all, you're a small business so your customers might come to the same conclusion about dealing with you. Language like 'key account manager' and 'business partner' are only euphemisms to make small businesses feel like they're someone important.
You say you have good experiences with Dell; that's good to hear and good for you: No one can fault you for sticking with someone who has met your expectations. If HP and IBM had done the same, I'd still be with them. It's lame that the only PCs I've bought that have been complete lemons have been from these guys, and worse because of their poor service. Once they used 'minimum dead pixel test' as an excuse not to fix... a CRT(!!!) This is why I use the local guy.
In my experience as a custom integrator of dell kit, Dell's premium support leaves much to be desired. Some brief lowlights:
- Dell's kit breaks more often than more vertical integrators. Dell builds systems with a much larger, active set of vendors. This helps them lower initial costs, at a tradeoff to level of confidence in the system as a whole. Especially hard drives.
- Dell (like some other vendors, admittedly) contracts out their field support (and increasingly their internal QA and phone support). That means the technician who shows up doesn't work directly for Dell. Their motive is not to make you, the customer happy. Their motive is to leave your premise as quickly as possible. Their motivation is to maximize profit from Dell, not insure your satisfaction.
- This also means that its difficult to get accountability. You have to go through many layers and multiple companies to fix any problems you have with support work.
- Related to the above points, a startling percentage of the technicians contracted by Dell display a startling lack of basic understanding and expertise. If they have to do more than replace an easy part or run the diagnostic CD, they're over their head. This can be very frustrating when you bump into something like a BIOS issue or a firmware issue with the PERC controllers. It's difficult to get escalation and proper diagnosis.
- There are always ongoing BIOS problems and firmware issues with the PERC storage controller cards.
- It also means that if you're not watching the support technician closely (standing over their shoulder) they will simply replace a part and then leave without even testing if what they did works. If the equipment is at a remote site without 24hr staffing, no amount of signage, verbal communication, or complaining to account managers will insure that the field tech actually informs your company they are "done" and waits for verification before they leave the premise.
It may be that some other vendors are just as bad, but all these things together (and probably others I cannot recall at the moment) make for a poor support experience. The entire feel of the support operation is that of a company attempting to do the bare minimum required by contract, instead of truly standing behind a product with confidence-building reserves of expertise and execution.
There should be better options.
For my home computers, I would NEVER buy one of the big brand names. I have too many stories of trying to fix friend's/family's PC's that have non-standard parts, or parts made by vendors that don't exist anymore, or even if they do exist the part costs 3x as much to replace after your warranty is up. At the shop where I work, we currently have high-end IBM's for cad work and mid-range IBM's for the office. Over half of them have had hard drives die suddenly. Support was no problem, they seemed to speak english well and always send out parts fast. On site service is pretty fast too (at least here in Canada). So they get low marks for hardware quality but ok marks for their support. Previous to the IBM's we had SGI's in our design department - near the end of their lease one needed a replacement graphics card. Sure they had it, and it was covered under warranty but they refused to send it to me so I could swap it myself. The repair person's time was not covered, so we paid $175 to replace a part that probably cost half that. DO make sure that the warranty and support extend for the entire length of the lease, if that's the way you are going. We have a Cisco PIX under 3-year lease but somehow the service was only 2 years. Now with only a few months left on the lease they refuse to help me with even a simple problem & I can't even access the Cisco downloads for software updates. Sure, I would happily build all 25 or so computers we have here in the shop, but management for some reason seems to think that workstations from the big brand names are better in some way (or possibly more impressive to the customers when they tour through the shop). In my opinion, the parts are cheap and in some cases just plain junk. When it comes to replacing a part I can get it in the same amount of time whether I complain to the IBM people or RMA directly to the manufacturer. Which way you go just depends on how much of the hands-on support work you want to do yourself.