help buying PCs for company

I need some *advice* I need to pick out 20 new computers for the office. The company is very small and only consists of 20 employees. Budget is set at $60,000.00 I don't want to take 60,000 and spend it on 20 new computers. That would be overkill for a small business that only makes $20,000 a week selling antlers. ... What manufacture do you guys think would be appropriate for this? Dell, HP, SONY etc...


The office is running Microsoft Office 2010 and will be running a windows OS? Which OS would you guys choose? For a small business that makes 20,000 a week selling antlers. All help is greatly appreciated. I don't think I need anything with a *dual core processor* for this type of business or am I wrong?

We are a Dell shop here [as far as systems running Windows] -- They have their problems, but for the most part, we have been pretty happy with them.

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We are a Dell shop here [as far as systems running Windows] -- They have their problems, but for the most part, we have been pretty happy with them.

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What make and model of Dell are you running?

We have all different kinds. For my machine in my office, I have a Precision T5500. We also have Optiplex's, Latitudes, Etc. I usually just email my salesman what specs I want, and he will send me a couple of quotes.

Make/model are irrelevant, just so long as they work. Hell, I built this thing almost 10 years ago and it would handle it!

You seem to have plenty of money left over?..........you don't.

You have 20 people without computers? (see your original specs in either this or the other thread). I can tell you what happens if you stick a computer in front of someone who has been using a paper system...........................NOTHING!!!!

Training will take up most of your budget.

DO NOT FORGET SALES ORDER PROCESSING SOFTWARE!!!!!!!!!

You will need this to take an order, process it, and invoice it. M$ Office 10 won't do this unless you hire me :D. This software would live on a server so we are talking licence and support fees. Support is usually 1 year in advance. And there are training costs involved here as well.

Do remember that you cannot train all staff at once or the business will be impacted (unless you employ temporary staff..........who also cost money......and you will have to employ them).

This exercise is NOT about hardware................it is about the impact of major hardware changes on a business. You must take all the additional considerations into account, or you will get a crap grade.

:):)

For the most part, I think everyone is covering most of the bases, but if you're asking which company I'd personally buy from in this, I'm gonna say to contact an HP sales rep. I have an HP Pavilion, which is the VERY first computer I EVER bought, and that was in 2000.

The machine is currently my FTP Server. Because it STILL works. The ONLY problem I've ever had with that machine, is that a few years ago, the video card in it started to go. I first tried different monitors, and it was the same, and figured out that it needs a new video card. It basically makes a GUI look ugly is all.

I started using it as my FTP server, and it's on 24/7, and without a GUI it looks just fine. And most of the time I use it through SSH anyway, so, really, it's not much of an issue. But the fact remains that the 43 GB (Yes, 43) Hard Drive it came with, which I'm not kidding; Has been Formatted and had full OS re-installs, Partitions all over the place, and ALL that, is STILL working.

10 years and only the video card has given me even a small issue. The rest of the hardware still works great.

If you're going to be buying in bulk like you seem to be going for, see if you can work out a deal. You might be able to get them to sell the machines to you for a cheaper price.

Anyway, just wanted to pop in and say that the HP machine I have is still kicking after a decade of VERY heavy use and even Heavier Abuse lol.

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Originally Posted by gore

Anyway, just wanted to pop in and say that the HP machine I have is still kicking after a decade of VERY heavy use and even Heavier Abuse lol.

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Gore, many pc's will run that long. Only common failures I noticed are harddisks, videocards, psu's and fans. Mostly because they run to hot or contain mechanical parts.
My home made pc from 1989 still runs... My experience: IBM/Lenovo, HP/Compaq, Dell have all reliable computers and they are as good as their parts. For example early nineties Quantum made very fast and reliable SCSI disks, at the other hand their ATA Bigfoot disks never reached the same reliability. I still have 2.1 GB Quantum SCSI disks that will spin up like a charm.

If you are looking at a complete new setup I would not only look at new pc's but at the complete system. For what purposes do they need their pc's?

Here's another scenario: if they only use office you probably can go with very light pc's costing almost nothing, using just a little power, with a small harddisk or even a small solid state disk with the OS. Make strong restrictions. They all connect to a server with the files on or to a very good NAS, which itself is made redundant and has frequent backup's. You will consum less power, have less problems, and with solid state disks and a good network the pc's will be fast as hell.

Advantages:

- If something goes wrong just replace the client/terminal pc and you are back running.
- Employees can log in from any client pc they want
- All files are centralized and you have backups