[Wolves] RE: Wolves Digest, Vol 64, Issue 16

[Kelly, Martin]

Message: 7
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 12:08:39 +0000
From: Peter Cannon <peter at cannon-linux.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [Wolves] re; cheap dell zeon box
To: Wolverhampton Linux User Group <wolves at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Message-ID: <200412101208.45560.peter at cannon-linux.freeserve.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

On Friday 10 December 2004 11:37, sparkes wrote:

> Kelly, Martin wrote:
> > The offer looks really great, but, a good friend tells me that Dell pc's
> > can be a bit of a problem when it comes to upgrades and parts, i.e. ide
> > cables and hard drives etc.  Am I wrong? am I looking a gift horse in the
> > mouth?  Have I missed the boat?  Answers on a postcard to.......... mart.
>
> Dell's consumer stuff has quite a poor rep but the business stuff is top
> notch.  As this is a small business server I would think the quality
> would be excellent.  Unfortunatly the offer did say it would run until
> the 15th or until they ran out and it looks like they ran out ;-)

OK Finlay something I can discuss with authority :-P

Sparkes statement is 90% correct some of the Business stuff is not too good 
either you need to keep a couple of things in mind with Dell stuff

1. The kit is produced on a production line don't be fooled by the add they 
ran where an old boy took a dusty box off a shelf with the slogan "We custom 
build your Computer" a good 60% of the kit is on a shelf they put the things 
together all day and every then plonked in storage its very easy to 
reconfigure to customers needs.

The support is not the best either, obviously you have to phone Ireland they 
will want to know everything including your lineage back to 1702 they will 
then contact the authorised support company in the relevant country they do 
aim to achieve next business day but we have had customers wait up to a week.

On the whole their stuff is very good and the prices are excellent (we cant 
beat them with our own clones) we do get a mediocre discount as a reseller 
but we couldn't get the 1600sc any cheaper than the £99.00 they we're offered 
at.

Packard Bell

These are great 'First Timer' machines, cheap and packed full of goodies this 
was one of the first PC's I had the down side is as Kevan said if you want to 
open the thing up they don't like any other hardware that is not already 
installed this is because most of the parts are keyed into the Packard Bell 
software you get with the machine I had no end of trouble with Modems, sound 
cards and graphics cards in the end I gave up and built my own from scratch.

The moral is you get what you pay for just because its cheap doesn't mean its 
good for what you want to do.

Thats not Pete moaning thats experience talking.


>
> sparkes

-- 
Regards,
Peter Cannon.
peter at cannon-linux.freeserve.co.uk

"There is every excuse for not knowing
there is no excuse for not asking"

Its looking a bit academic now but,  My Friend (Andy help me out here) seemed to think that connections were non standard.  I'm currently, doing some serious thinking about building a decent 64 bit machine for video editing, the Cinelerra docs say that 64 bit is highly desireable for more ambitious projects to get the full benefit of the system.  
The heroine warrior website states the spec as a dual proccessor setup with lots an lotsa ram and hard drive space, but the user groups settle back  into a more reasonable single cpu with lotsa ram and hard drive space instead.  both state 64 bit is very beneficial, in real terms, hence my drooling over the dell package.  
But as you say, you get what you pay for. I'm probably better off building from scratch choosing boards and components more specifically.  
Just had a quick look at the dell site again and it looks like the web page no longer exists. 
Maybe it was all a dream.................
Mart.