It's time to update my office - advice appreciated on buying 9 new workstations.

[malfunction]

C
9 Pre-built Dell Vostro 200s (19" WS TFT) - £2,897.55 + £539.96 shipping (exc)

To be fair the £199 vostro is closer in spec to what you've put together on Scan. That shipping though - WTF?

I was looking at this base units on Scan but the best I could come up with was £150 to 200 with no keyboard, mouse or monitor which is what put me onto the vostro. FWIW I recently bought a Dell laptop for a relative and it was surprisingly free of crap (though I did uninstall works and install open office).

[mycarsavw]

Something deep inside of me tells me Dell is the wrong choice but something (you lot) make me think it could be worth it

I used to hate Dell and everything they stood for, I had endless problems with buying PCs from them for clients of mine and the subsequent problems with warranty and RTB issues.

Perhaps times have changed...

I'm going to shoot off some emails to HP and Dell and see what can be done about bulk (albeit small) buying and shipping.

[Lucio]

Perhaps times have changed...

I'm going to shoot off some emails to HP and Dell and see what can be done about bulk (albeit small) buying and shipping.

I thought the same till I joined a company that only ever ordered their PC's from Dell (at the time because of the ease of ordering + price). To be fair I've had two faults in 4 years with them, one was a short on a unit, possibly due to not inserting the power lead fast enough that I got sorted out in less than 15 minutes via their net chat support and the 2nd is a 4 year old PC where a PCI slot's fallen over.

Only thing I'd suggest though is to phone them rather than e-mail them. Don't take their first offer either, say well I'm gonna go check with HP and they'll often call you back the next day to see how things went and with a better offer.

[joshwa]

We use all Dell's at work bar maybe 5% HP, and all the new Dell's seem pretty much flawless (well apart from the regular bios updates), and support is pretty decent (we go for 3yr warranty and get next day call out etc), the only MAJOR problems we've had with Dell is needing nearly every (maybe 20% plus) Dell Optiplex GX270 motherboard replacing due to faulty CAPs, and the same amount or more Maxtor hard drives replacing...

[madman045]

The thing with Dell, is yes the shipping is high from the website, but when ordering 9, id call them as you may be able to get it reduced or even taken off, wont know till you ask...

[Re-Invented]

We use all Dell's at work bar maybe 5% HP, and all the new Dell's seem pretty much flawless (well apart from the regular bios updates), and support is pretty decent (we go for 3yr warranty and get next day call out etc), the only MAJOR problems we've had with Dell is needing nearly every (maybe 20% plus) Dell Optiplex GX270 motherboard replacing due to faulty CAPs, and the same amount or more Maxtor hard drives replacing...

Also the PSU's i find are very unreliable but never had a problem getting anyhitng replaced

Lee

[joshwa]

We've had PSU fans stop working as well, the old Optiplex GX270 and GX280s clog up with dust pretty easily. (and then you get fan noise problems as they have to work harder to get air flowing). Pretty bad design (SFF) really carried over from the old GX50s when all you had was a 1ghz celeron, and then they (Dell) expect the same case design, with no air in-vents, to cope with a 2.8ghz P4 lol

[mycarsavw]

Suddenly I'm not so confident in Dell

[joshwa]

yeah it's too early to tell whether the Optiplex GX520 (which was replaced rather quickly) and Optiplex GX745 are reliable or not

The main difference that I've found with the same size HP machines is that the HPs always seem to come with 4 memory slots, whereas all our Dells come with 2 memory slots... in the future when you want all your PCs to have 4gb of ram, you might find it cheaper to upgrade HPs

[mycarsavw]

The main difference that I've found with the same size HP machines is that the HPs always seem to come with 4 memory slots, whereas all our Dells come with 2 memory slots... in the future when you want all your PCs to have 4gb of ram, you might find it cheaper to upgrade HPs

Think you may have missed the parts in bold!

The time has finally come to update my 7 Win95 and 2 Win98 machines!

You may laugh but they have been completely solid for the past 10 or so years and the only reason they're being replaced is because an update to a program we use has been issued and there is no way at all to get it to work on the 95 machines (I spent all day Monday and Tuesday trying! )

By the time I get round to upgrading these, computers will be obsolete

[Re-Invented]

HP all the way mate if your gonna buy prebuilt ones, thats what were changing most of our dells to

Lee

[madman045]

yeah it's too early to tell whether the Optiplex GX520 (which was replaced rather quickly) and Optiplex GX745 are reliable or not

The main difference that I've found with the same size HP machines is that the HPs always seem to come with 4 memory slots, whereas all our Dells come with 2 memory slots... in the future when you want all your PCs to have 4gb of ram, you might find it cheaper to upgrade HPs

I hope there isn't anything wrong with the GX745 lol as we just installed 30 of them at a clients plus the SFF with the TFTs that fix to them

I have an old GX150 by my feet still going strong, cd drive is a little hit and miss but runs 2003 web server fine

I have also found the 3yr warranty very worth while for the extra peace of mind.

Andy

[joshwa]

Yeah the old Dells were rock solid

Does anyone know how to get free postage? The Vostro prices are pretty awesome!

Josh

[mycarsavw]

Yeah the old Dells were rock solid

Does anyone know how to get free postage? The Vostro prices are pretty awesome!

Josh

Just on the phone to them now trying

[Lucio]

Just on the phone to them now trying

Let us know how you get on and what you said to get them to agree

Best I've managed before is getting discounted carriage by arguing that they're all coming to the same unit (this was on units w/out monitors)

[mycarsavw]

Well after 40 minutes on the phone!

I've got them to spec 9 Vostros and a server. They're doing a "deal" on the total price if I buy a server at the same time.

I just said that for 9 machines coming to one address, £600 is ridiculous and that I could buy another two machines for the same price. I may have mentioned that HP don't charge as much

I'll report back with a quote when it comes through.