Need recommendation on high quality prebuilt computer
in [General Linux]
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From: Jean-David Beyer on 30 Jun 2010 13:11 Todd wrote: > Hi All, > > When a customer wants an instant replacement coomputer, > I will usually help them configure out a Dell. Problem: > Dell's quality has gone to hell lately. I am batting > three with problem out of ten. Yesterday was a brand new > Optiplex with a bad hard drive (and after 3 hours of custom > software configuration). > > My customer's a willing to pay a bit more for quality. > Anyone know of a prebuild line like Dell that > have not gone to hell? > The first computer I had was essentially a white-box machine supplied by a local computer dealer with whom I had previous good experience through where I had previously worked. Than was in about 1996. 166 MHz Pentium (1), 64 Meg of RAM, 2 Gbyte hard drive. (That is really funny: the machine I am typing this on has 8 GBytes of RAM.) The next machine I bought in early 2004 from VA Linux Systems (no longer in the manufacturing business). It worked very well and is still in use to run Windows XP on and act as a print and CD-ROM burner. When I wanted a more powerful machine in late 2003, I looked around and decided to put one together myself because I did not find anything I liked at a price I was willing to pay. I do not know exactly what it cost, but it was a lot more than any commercial machine. But it had just what I wanted in it. $600 for a mother board, $750 each for the two processors, six 10,000 rpm hard drives, etc. I did not charge me for labor. It took several months to build, most of which was waiting for parts. It probably took only a few days to put together. Over the years I have recommended Dell machines, but their quality seems to have gone down continuously. They always cost a little more than their competitors, but their customer service was very good to begin with. But this started going down hill about the same time as the quality of their products. Their servers seemed to be OK, but the prices for those were enough more that I found I could build a machine cheaper than they did, and I then knew every component in there, and why it was there. (I would not presume to build a lap-top, though.) And I doubt I would wish to put one together for any friend of mine, since I do not want to have to service it. Also, I do not know enough about Windows to support such a machine. I did install Linux for some friends of mine (RHL 7.3, I think it was) that they ran for several years after their version of Windows 95 quit on them and no one could make it work. But mostly I do not want the headaches of having a customer needing support. You have my sympathy. -- .~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642. /V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939. /( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org ^^-^^ 12:50:01 up 1 day, 16:04, 4 users, load average: 4.60, 4.70, 4.73
From: JohnF on 1 Jul 2010 14:34
SINNER <arcade.master(a)gmail.com> wrote: > * Todd wrote in comp.os.linux.misc: >> When a customer wants an instant replacement coomputer, >> I will usually help them configure out a Dell. Problem: >> Dell's quality has gone to hell lately. I am batting >> three with problem out of ten. Yesterday was a brand new >> Optiplex with a bad hard drive (and after 3 hours of custom >> software configuration). > [...] > > Interesting timing for your post > http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/technology/29dell.html I >>loved<< the part of that article that says, "Even the firm defending Dell in the lawsuit was affected when Dell balked at fixing 1,000 [of their] suspect computers, according to e-mail messages revealed in the dispute." That's absolutely hilarious. As to the op's request for info, I've found the two eBay whitebox vendors allpczone and magic-micro to be pretty good. -- John Forkosh ( mailto: j(a)f.com where j=john and f=forkosh ) |