White box or brand name?

Several readers wrote to comment on the choice of white-box hardware for my son's school computer lab. Jason Lester, for example, writes:

"You're doing the school a disservice by buying 'white boxes' from a local company. Been there, done that, and will never do it again. And paying more for [white-box] computers [than we spent on Compaq PCs] makes it even worse.

Readers questioned whether the school's white-box provider - a term used to describe companies that assemble their own machines from commodity parts - could deliver on price, support and maintenance. Let's look at each of these issues.

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Several readers wrote to comment on the choice of white-box hardware for my son's school computer lab. Jason Lester, for example, writes:

"You're doing the school a disservice by buying 'white boxes' from a local company. Been there, done that, and will never do it again. And paying more for [white-box] computers [than we spent on Compaq PCs] makes it even worse.

Readers questioned whether the school's white-box provider - a term used to describe companies that assemble their own machines from commodity parts - could deliver on price, support and maintenance. Let's look at each of these issues.

Lester says he can get a Compaq PC similar to the ones we're getting for almost $150 less, which I'm sure is true. But we couldn't. We're only buying 15 PCs and one server so we don't qualify for the price breaks available to some schools. But at that price we get on-site installation we get from our vendor (MJP Computers in Oxnard, Calif.).

I hear great things about our vendor's support, which is different from the horror stories readers tell about how searches for even simple answers from brand-name vendors turn into quests that would make a hardened mercenary blanch.It always sounds good when brand-name vendors do the sales pitch, but the reality is never as painless as they claim. And if such a thing as real hard-core support exists you'll be paying handsomely for it.

Maintenance is an interesting issue. If you are a big organization and have your techs trained by your brand-name vendor, you can get priority service, but for the rest of us it's the hold from hell: 20 amazingly dumb questions from the first-level tech, another hold from hell, a repeat of the same 20 questions by the second-level tech. And if you argue your case successfully, maybe service will get to you tomorrow. Elapsed time: around two hours on the phone and a machine that's dead for at least 48 hours.

Our vendor offers same day on-site service if you call before 3 p.m., doesn't make you prove your blood type before believing you have a problem, and even will loan you replacement parts and PCs instead of the usual "send it to us and when we get it we'll send you a replacement" routine that takes, at the very least, two days. And as for service costs, our vendor charges $25 per hour for schools for nonwarranty work!

Another issue that affects both support and maintenance is the vendor's quality. Usually when you order a batch of identical PCs you expect they will be identical. I have heard several stories of major-brand companies shipping batches of PCs that were supposed to be identical but in reality had a mix of motherboards, drives and network cards.These big brands seem to occasionally forget that organizations order batches of PCs to a single spec to minimize support costs.

I know some of you have had wretched experiences with white-box vendors just as some of you (myself included) have had rotten experiences with brand-name vendors. While there certainly is an element of luck involved when you make a vendor choice, you can find a local vendor that is reliable, available and reasonably priced, that provides good service and support, and that gives a damn about you in a way the big brands can't because of their scale of operations.