We're talking about an office environment here, not a home.
Office:
From Jan. 2002 - Jan 2005 we had OptiPlex GX110 desktops. 733mhz, 512mb and 40gb hdd's. Nice little PC's, and they served us well. In Jan 2005, out rolled the OptiPlex GX270's - 2.8ghz, 1gb and 80gb hdd's.
Initially, i thought 'whoah, this is a lot of PC'. Three months later, a new version of an application that runs on 85% of the desktops was released. Minimum specs: 2.0ghz and 1gb.
Home:
My desktop rig is a 1800+ w/ 1gb that i've had for almost 5 years. Still got the p3/500 w/ 512 that it replaced. That served as a replacement for the p120 w/ 256 that I was running debian on.
As for my car it's hardly under warranty - 142,000mi and still runs like new. You might get a kick out of the fact that I just put new brakepads on it in my garage last month!
If a power supply croaks or a processor fries at home, there is minimal cost associated with it. You buy a new part, and replace it. No rush other than our geeky sense of pride.
When something dies in a business, it costs money. Not only does the problem need to be fixed, but the employee who's machine went down can not do their job - thats where the real cost is.
The best bet, regardless of where you actually buy the hardware, it to stick with major manufacturers, a 3 year replacement cycle, and product lines designed for enterprise use. It may cost a little more, but it's worth every penny. Never try to deal with RMA'ing parts with your reseller - it's always a disaster.
As much as possible - which is about 99% of the time, i buy HP, Dell and Cisco... Thats it. They all have 3 year warranties. As long as you keep up on the replacement cycle, everything is always under warranty, which means you never waste money upgrading pc'a or servicing equipment to keep it running.
I've got HP Proliant servers and a few larger chassis based ProCurves. The ProCurve's are better than Cisco Catalyst's IMO - cheaper, and they have a lifetime warranty - no anuual smartnet extortion). HP overnighted me a new hdd today just because one of my servers was showing a HDD SMART predictive failure... Thats right, the disk is functioning fine, and they are overnighting a new one just so it can be replaced before it does fail. Pretty good if you ask me.
Dell OptiPlex's are a pretty good value - ~$1200 for a 3.0ghz p4, 1gb, 80gb hdd, 17" lcd and gold tech suppt, which means very little hold time, and overnighting of any needed parts.
Cisco stuff rarely dies, but you can get 2-4 hour response with SmartNet if you need it. I most small to mid size businesses, SmartNet is a waste of money.
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We're talking about an office environment here, not a home.
Office:
From Jan. 2002 - Jan 2005 we had OptiPlex GX110 desktops. 733mhz, 512mb and 40gb hdd's. Nice little PC's, and they served us well. In Jan 2005, out rolled the OptiPlex GX270's - 2.8ghz, 1gb and 80gb hdd's.
Initially, i thought 'whoah, this is a lot of PC'. Three months later, a new version of an application that runs on 85% of the desktops was released. Minimum specs: 2.0ghz and 1gb.
Home:
My desktop rig is a 1800+ w/ 1gb that i've had for almost 5 years. Still got the p3/500 w/ 512 that it replaced. That served as a replacement for the p120 w/ 256 that I was running debian on.
As for my car it's hardly under warranty - 142,000mi and still runs like new. You might get a kick out of the fact that I just put new brakepads on it in my garage last month!
If a power supply croaks or a processor fries at home, there is minimal cost associated with it. You buy a new part, and replace it. No rush other than our geeky sense of pride.
When something dies in a business, it costs money. Not only does the problem need to be fixed, but the employee who's machine went down can not do their job - thats where the real cost is.
The best bet, regardless of where you actually buy the hardware, it to stick with major manufacturers, a 3 year replacement cycle, and product lines designed for enterprise use. It may cost a little more, but it's worth every penny. Never try to deal with RMA'ing parts with your reseller - it's always a disaster.
As much as possible - which is about 99% of the time, i buy HP, Dell and Cisco... Thats it. They all have 3 year warranties. As long as you keep up on the replacement cycle, everything is always under warranty, which means you never waste money upgrading pc'a or servicing equipment to keep it running.
I've got HP Proliant servers and a few larger chassis based ProCurves. The ProCurve's are better than Cisco Catalyst's IMO - cheaper, and they have a lifetime warranty - no anuual smartnet extortion). HP overnighted me a new hdd today just because one of my servers was showing a HDD SMART predictive failure... Thats right, the disk is functioning fine, and they are overnighting a new one just so it can be replaced before it does fail. Pretty good if you ask me.
Dell OptiPlex's are a pretty good value - ~$1200 for a 3.0ghz p4, 1gb, 80gb hdd, 17" lcd and gold tech suppt, which means very little hold time, and overnighting of any needed parts.
Cisco stuff rarely dies, but you can get 2-4 hour response with SmartNet if you need it. I most small to mid size businesses, SmartNet is a waste of money.