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What Brand of Computer Hardware Should We Be Looking At?
Okay, so you made a decision on what type of network you need now what type of hardware should be purchased to support this. This is a big question! For this category there are two basic scenarios “white boxes” or branded hardware (Dell, IBM, HP, etc.). If you put a bunch of “techies” in a room they could possibly debate this for hours. Our take on it boils down to this, support.
At Microtech we have always been and supported brand solutions. Never the less I decided to “white box” my PC at home. I did my research found the different hardware I wanted to go with found the best pricing and away I went. When I was finished I thought that the experience was great. Maybe our philosophy had been wrong. Then a few weeks later I turned my PC on. Nothing. Not even a blinking cursor in the top left corner. After turning the PC off and on several times there it was. Phew, it must have been a fluke. Nope, 50% of the time I turned on the PC that was the result. Well now what? Is my problem the power supply, the motherboard, memory, hard drives, or what? The problem here is dealing with different companies support, or lack there of, for each individual component. For a business environment where time is everything this can be nothing short of a nightmare.
Regardless of what you think of the branded companies support, for business our philosophy is right. When you have branded hardware it doesn’t matter which component the problem lies with, it is still the problem of that manufacture. We can not stress this enough for businesses, branded hardware is better.
Okay, so you will take our word for it. You found a great deal on an HP at a local electronics store for $500. Wrong. That branded hardware has no place in the business environment either. There is a reason it has a 90 day warranty and acts sluggish and slow. In addition to this, it most likely has Microsoft XP Home that has very little control over users from an administration standpoint, a maximum size of 5 PC’s in a peer to peer network, you can’t attach it to a Windows domain (server based network), and countless other reasons.
When making purchases for your business, look at decent business class PC’s that have a three year warranty. This doesn’t mean you have to spend thousands of dollars on business class computing equipment. Your initial purchase price will be higher but the costs over the long run will be lower.
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