What do you look for in a System?

[Steve]

OK, so you've got to buy a pre-built system, or somebody wants you to recommend one. What do you look for?

I usually try to focus on the thing around the CPU rather than the CPU, because a 3ghz HT P4 is no good with 256MB RAM and a Geforce 4 MX.

[Moby-Dick]

I spec a lot of pre built systems for clients - masinly for the onsite warrenty.

at the end of the day its about fit-for purpose , hence why we often choose the cheapest HP/Compaqs we can get.

[Jonny M]

HP pre built business desktops seem pretty good I must say

[Butuz]

What i look for in a pre built system is:

* Cheap
* Reliable
* Good components
* Warranty
* Good customer support infrastructure in place.

The interesting thing is - you can get a PC that comes with the last 2 points (the most important i recon) for not much more than what it costs to build your own. I never build my own PC's for business use. I buy all my work PC's in from an OEM.

Butuz

[Howard]

I look for how good the components are, and if it's got an AthlonXP or P4 in. If it's got anything else in, it's no good.

I also check to see if it's got at least 512MB ram. Graphics aren't essential unless it's advertised as a gaming system, in which case they should be fairly decent else it's false advertising

Aftersales Service is essential, as usually these PCs are purchased by people with limited knowledge, so if something goes wrong there needs to be someone who can help! Preferably without charging extortionate fees.

Then I just look to ensure the rest of the hardware is decent - Hard drive, optical drives, sound, etc. If all that is good, and no cheap OEM junk is used, or it's a 2.8GHz Celeron wiht 256MB ram, 100MHz FSB, and some Radeon 9200 advertised as an Elite Super Power UberMachine, then it's a decent OEM PC

[Rythmic]

Good Warranty - no point having a machine thats critical for business use, but having RTB or having to wait two weeks for an engineer.

Balanced named components - no point having a 3 GHz P4 with <512MB - no point having a x800Pro if it's plugged into a PC Chips motherboard...

TBH Dell is rather hard to beat on these things - unless you want a games machine or an ultra quiet/small box - They'll give you a better spec than you can build when you include the cost of windows.

[nichomach]

What i look for in a pre built system is:

* Cheap
* Reliable
* Good components
* Warranty
* Good customer support infrastructure in place.

The interesting thing is - you can get a PC that comes with the last 2 points (the most important i recon) for not much more than what it costs to build your own. I never build my own PC's for business use. I buy all my work PC's in from an OEM.

Butuz

Absolutely; as to what I look for hardware-wise, it depends on who the intended user is. For most of our business people here from clerical through to management, graphics horsepower is a complete irrelevance. What they need is good 2D application performance, so I kind of take the opposite approach to Kez; an X800 isn't going to make Excel or Powerpoint load any quicker Desktop space is always an issue, but they don't need 5.1 audio, so I generally get Dell Optiplexes with a built-in speaker for desktops. Obviously, the guys in our design department get significantly different kit; duallie workstations with fast SCSI disk subsystems and decently powerful graphics, but then they're running things like Autodesk Revit and 3D Studio, so the graphics performance required can be significantly greater than the average user. It's horses for courses, really. I also always look for decent warranty cover, and all of the machines we buy have 3 year warranties on them.