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Actually, don't buy PCs at all...

Submitted by Don Marti on Tue, 12/04/2007 - 12:25pm

"Gartner remains an advocate of the emerging trend for employee-owned PCs and laptops."

In other words, they're all flaky, so the IT organization should concentrate on the server side and make the employee deal with the consequences of his crapware-installing, virus-catching habits.

Click to read the article this is in response to.

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Myth... two class PC society no longer exists

By Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 12/04/2007 - 12:50pm.

How does anyone get away with some of the things said in this article?

"Fiering said these systems have limited quality assurance programs, having undergone less rigorous testing than corporate hardware which can result in a 50% higher failure rate incurring higher repair costs and user down time."

50% higher failure rate? Is there a study on that? I worked for an organization that bought the Dell Optiplex...supposedly a business grade machine, I believe they were the GX270's at the time. We had to replace an entire order because the motherboard capacitors were blowing, leaking, etc. In fact Dell kept it hush hush and eventually wrote off some 300 million dollars one quarter because of warranty repair work.

The only true difference between the two classes isn't hardware at all, it's the warranty and support and that's it!!!

You can buy a home user PC, upgrade it to XP Pro, a Pentium 4 processor (or whatever is the latest, Core Duo, etc), upgrade the RAM and even buy the 3 or more year warranty.

Hardware is hardware, trust me, the testing they do on home hardware are the same tests they do on "business class" hardware and that's a fact!!!

A two class PC society no longer exists when it comes to hardware, it's support and options, options, options.

Right-on right-on

By Tim K (not verified) on Wed, 12/05/2007 - 11:19am.

We have been forced until recently by the IT Director to buy "business grade" Dells and Gateways (when the budget allowed that is, which was about 2-4 new PCs a year for an office staff of about 45) and I see no advantage in buying the “business grade” PCs over the “home market” ones because the run of the mill Compaqs and Dells that we have do just as well when configured to do WHAT IS REQUIRED instead of what is desired but not required to accomplish the day-to-day functioning of our company. Because of the general downturn in the profitability our product lines, we have been perusing the used PC market for about 8 months now and have done well with other company’s junk - one man's junk is another's treasure. Er, by the way, this message originated from a recently acquired used Dell Optiplex GX270 that had recently replaced a Gateway PIII due to the hoggish requirements of WebSphere. I sure hope this one isn’t one of the “bad” ones because I don’t relish a PC meltdown during a critical programming assignment. The PIII went to the junior programmer! We don’t junk PCs until either they just won’t function or the software needed for business applicatons no longer runs on it.

Hummm there is more to a desktop than hardware

By Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 12/17/2007 - 11:32am.

We went through the Dell motherboard capacitor issue as well. With all things they can break no matter the cost or class of machine.

Things not mentioned are the ability to monitor the Optiplex Desktops, check if drive space is running low, see if the case has been removed to steel parts, remote flash bios etc. Most of the consumer grade computers do not have these abilities.

Ignorance is bliss and there is more to the cost of a desktop computer than the amount on the invoice.

So, another magazine succumbs to rhetoric

By Jeff S (not verified) on Tue, 12/04/2007 - 10:06pm.

One really has to wonder why you would put an article out like this. There are no studies cited, no evidence to support mythical claims.

We also have tried the "biz" class systems. The ONLY difference is that the manufacturer makes more margin, and the inclusion of management tools, which IT can add to any system. Often the video cards are weaker (oohhh, nice concept in this web/gui/saas world we live in), the boards are often weaker themselves.

We buy higherend Dell and Lenovo, wipe the drives on the Dells, remove some apps on the Lenovos, and away we go.

Better experience and usability for our users, no desire to bring their own system in- did you really write that about personal-owned systems????

Our real world and substantiated experience disagrees completely with this article.

So, another magazine succumbs to rhetoric

By Jeff S (not verified) on Tue, 12/04/2007 - 10:07pm.

One really has to wonder why you would put an article out like this. There are no studies cited, no evidence to support mythical claims.

We buy higherend Dell and Lenovo, wipe the drives on the Dells, remove some apps on the Lenovos, and away we go.

Better experience and usability for our users, no desire to bring their own system in- did you really write that about personal-owned systems????

Our real world and substantiated experience disagrees completely with this article.

Seriously?

By Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 12/05/2007 - 10:39am.

I completely disagree with this article. 50%? Really? Where did that statistic come from? A cited study or referrence would be nice.

What other readers have commented on already I've also experienced. I won't name manufacturer's I've dealt with. Honestly I've seen ZERO difference in hardware performance or reliability when it comes to a consumer class versus business class device. TCO due to the same hardware footprint in each PC? Please. Open some boxes up from 2005 to present and tell me you have EXACTLY the same equipment in each. I know I don't and when you get a warranty replacement many times you'll get a referb piece that fits but isn't the same quality as what you received before.

As far as response time goes, look at your ROIs folks and consider the cost of a hardware tech versus extra cost for those 4 hour response times. In house is always a better bet.