Buyer's Guide - Desktop PCs

Buyer's Guide - Desktop PCs

Table of Contents

Introduction	2
What’s the Business Angle on Desktop Computers?	3
What Features Your Growing Business Needs (and Doesn’t Need)	3
How to Handle Support, Maintenance, and Management	6
Jargon Watch: Which Buzzwords Matter to You?	8
Resource Links	10
The Vendors and Their Product Lines	11
Vendor Product Lines	12
Dell	12
Hewlett-Packard-Compaq Product Lines	14
Lenovo Product Lines	15
Gateway Product Lines	16
Apple Product Lines	17
Brands NOT on Our List for the Corporate Desktop Computer	18
Why 'Recommended Configurations' Instead of Buyer’s Guides?	20
You Are the Exception If.....('Special Cases')	20
Scott's Rule of Thumb: Buy the One in the Middle	21
What We Have at AllBusiness.com	21
AllBusiness.com Readers Rate the Vendors!	22
Shopping for Systems from Major Vendors	23
Shopping for Dell Desktop Computers	24
Shopping for HP-Compaq Desktop Computers	28
Shopping for IBM - Lenovo Desktop Computers	32
Shopping for Gateway Desktop Computers	34
Shopping for the Apple Macintosh Desktop Computer	35
Bottom Line: Comparing the Prices on Business Desktop Computers	37

Buyer's Guide - Desktop PCs

Introduction

Here's useful advice and handy rules of thumb for buying the right kinds of business desktop PC at a fair price.

Time to buy desktop computers for your business? Oh joy.

Whether you're buying five machines for basic admin work, or a hundred systems massaging customer and inventory data, you have the same challenges: identifying well-made systems that you'll have to manage and maintain — with a minimum of problems, please, and at a fair price.

Even if you have an in-house PC buying expert who knows the current state of the market, it helps if you yourself have at least a broad idea of the current state of the market, and enough grasp of the technology to be able to talk to your tech people, your consultants, or the customer rep at the computer shop.

The good news is that the Web is filled with reviews and ratings of the vast number of PC models and brands, all at your fingertips.

The bad news is that most of these product reviews are focused on the consumer, not on the business buyer. So performance and features are evaluated for suitability to gamers, digital camera enthusiasts, and Web shoppers.

AllBusiness.com is here to help.

We assume you're not buying your first computer, but your next computer (or office-full of computers). You don't need us to explain computers as if you've never seen one before--if you need that kind of info, check the excerpts from the Dummies series elsewhere on our site. What you do need to know is what's going on in the market today and in the near future, so you can make smart technology investment decisions.

In this Product Buying Advice package we highlight issues most important to growing small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) who are buying desktop computers for business use. We give a thumbnail sketch of the major computer makers and their business-oriented product lines. Then, to be helpful, we recommend two basic PC configurations that should satisfy the needs of most business users. And finally, we go on a shopping spree on your behalf, pricing out our recommended configurations with the major vendors. (And boy, what an experience that was!)

Along the way, we'll pepper you with advice and Rules of Thumb, and results of our polls of the most authoritative small and medium-size business owners of all--namely, your fellow readers of AllBusiness.com. And some other stuff we'll think of as we proceed. We also offer you chances, throughout this feature, to rate, comment, correct, highlight, point out, argue with us about, and share with other readers your own experience and judgements.

Our sources for the judgments that follow include our own experience and scars from decades in this business; advice from Thomas Carroll, owner of TLC Computer Services, Inc., a consulting firm that supports a couple hundred desktop systems for a dozen companies in the Huntington Station, New York area; Richard Morochove, who runs his consultancy, Morochove & Associates, from Toronto, Ontario, advising small and medium-size businesses on technology; and our own Scott Pankonin, AllBusiness.com's Director of Technology, who keeps the computers humming here. And of course from our valued readers.

We, and your fellow AllBusiness.com readers, welcome your feedback and experience, so we include lots of opportunity for you to add your comments. Remember, we're on the Web — interaction is a way of life here!

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What's the Business Angle on Desktop Computers?

If your business has desks, then you have desktop computers.

Even some businesses that don't have desks, like warehouses and delivery trucks, have them (or use laptops, anyway). For some businesses — software companies and other tech-intensive businesses — the computers are the whole point, the defining element.

For the rest of us, PCs are just a very general-purpose tool — one we can't live without because it's just too useful. (Although there are days....)

For most business users, any basic recent-vintage PC is at least adequate. That's the first piece of good news. Business PCs for the most part are affordable, durable, available, and don't create much trouble since business buyers don't usually buy bleeding-edge technologies. As long as you can resist the techno-lust of your buyers and enthusiast staffers — "We've just got to have ECC memory to protect us from alpha rays, and high-RPM drives, and graphics cards with 120,000 vortex capability!" — you shouldn't break the bank account or enrich too many tech consultants just to keep PCs on your office desktops.

The further good news is that, after 25 years and huge volumes (literally a billion PCs sold since 1980), most vendors know how to make a functional and pretty reliable piece of hardware. Software — now that may be a different story in some cases; but hardware has become something of a commodity, at least for standard users.

Mac's Rule of Thumb: If push comes to shove, you can just punch the button and buy a that standard-issue PCs from a brand manufacturer, and expect to get a pretty good machine that will do what you need, and at a reasonable price.

Everything after that is fine-tuning.