Dell or HP???
 

Hi All,

Im in the middle of buying some new machines and need some advice, ive placed an order with Dell for 19 Desktops and 3 laptops, for over £20k

Now some how a company called insight have managed to catch wind of this and are chasing me for the business, theyve managed to cut the bill by almost £5k for the same spec machines, the only difference really is most of the processors are AMD not P4's and that they are made by HP not Dell...

What would you go for????? And why? which do you think is the better one?

Most of the machines throughout the company are currently Dell, and on that basis kinda like the idea to stick to Dell..... I asked Insight about the 3yr next day on site warranty, and apparently that is included in their pricing too...

Any advice would be great, before i give the go ahead to Dell....

Thanks in advance guys :)

KP

Re: Dell or HP???
 

I've not owned any PC's by Dell, but I have had an HP one & the ones at work are HP/Compaq.

Dunno about the ones Insight are offering, but all the HP machines I've seen have included proprietary motherboards, making them hard to maintain out of warranty & offering reduced expansion options.

imo the AMD/Intel is not really an issue, performance wise, although it's worth pointing out that the AMD chips don't have the thermal throttling protection that the p4's have.

It's your money, KP, but my 'gut feel' says stick with Dell :)

Re: Dell or HP???
 

Like homealone has pointed out, the processor's arent really the issue, HP's are notorious for carp motherboards (esp the lappy's)

I'd say go with dell, yet 5k is a lot of cash :shrug: Dell's customer service is pretty good as well.

Re: Dell or HP???
 

Heh, its not quite my money, hence the awkward position / hesitation.....

Personally i prefer the way i have been dealt with by Dell so far, i added another 2 machines to the order today, and they knocked nearly £3k off the total price (so only paid an extra couple of hundred for the 2 new machines)

Insight have called me no less than 9 times in the last 2 hours going backwards and forewards getting information for me....... I just wanna make sure we get the "better" machines for money wise, rather than being screwed in 2 years time....... if that makes sense :erm:

KP

Re: Dell or HP???
 

mmm 5k amounts to almost 25% of the total cost with dell :erm:

Will leave it until tomorrow and see what everyone else says :)

KP

Re: Dell or HP???
 

Dell all the way for bussiness. There reliable and rebust

Re: Dell or HP???
 

As much as hate Dell, I'd still go with them - if only because of the motherboard thing stated above.
AMD are (imo) the better CPUs though.

Re: Dell or HP???
 

is that a type of fish mobo :D :D :D , sorry i couldnt resist , where i work they are going from compaq to dell , i will try and do some asking and find out why for you :)

Re: Dell or HP???
 

I prefer AMD but Pentiums are better for business. That's why there so widely used in them

Re: Dell or HP???
 

dell dell dell

Re: Dell or HP???
 

Dell without a doudt are the best on the market for business.

I have done some work on home PC's made by HP and when I see the logo I cry. Nothing but trouble when it comes to upgrading.

They seem to crash more than most for any old reason.
(sometimes it user problems :) )

Re: Dell or HP???
 

I love my two Dells (Dimension 4550 and 4600). Even though getting the second one was a real nightmare as their staff couldn't seem to take our credit card pament properly!

One of the main reasons I like mine is that inside the case they are so tidy and they even include additional runners and clips for additional hard drives et al. When I installed some more memory in my Nan's HP machine it was horrid, cables just loose and catching on the motherboard :(

I also like the excelent diag feature, if there's a problem with the machine the leds on the back change colour and give you an idea what it is. :)

Why don't you tell Dell that you're being chased by another company and they can offer you the same cheaper, maybe they will do you an offer? I know they did with me when I had all that trouble with them :)

Re: Dell or HP???
 

I got my dad an old Dell optiplex GXa P233 from work. Its not that powerfull but doe's him for the internet and Office 2000.

Re: Dell or HP???
 

Dell, no contest, we have 300+ Dell's in our company (that's just the uk) they are our corporate standard, so maybe 2,500 ish worldwide. Apart from 1 or 2 DOA's and now some monitors going pop for the older (5years+) machines, very few problems.
I would try for an extra 'volume/value' discount if poss to sweeten the deal, but go with them anyway.

Re: Dell or HP???
 

For Desktops I would always choose HP - I have had nothing but problems with Dell Desktops (I buy hundreds of PC's per year). However, for Laptops I would say Dell are better.

That said - for heavy business use I would personally not touch AMD processors.

Re: Dell or HP???
 

so it looks as though it is going to be a personal preference issue then :D

Re: Dell or HP???
 

Nah, intel is more widely used because managers are dumb and believe the hype :D


We used to use Dell PC's and lappies in DERA, have £1milli on of them go through in one month alone, the DOA rate was so low we only tested ones we took to remote sites.

Re: Dell or HP???
 

My personal preference would be Dell on my two experiences:

Personal computers - I'm on my third Dell desktop now - I guess you could call me a serial upgrader. The new one is the best I've had yet (and 8300) and is a superb piece of architecture. The cases are on little pistons, making case access simple. Everything inside is snap-in, rather than using those nasty little screws, and the layout is superbly thought out, easy access to every component.

Professionally, I'm not an IT person, but I recently specified a new gigabit based professional audio editing system for my department with 4tb of storage.

We went for the big Dell Precision workstations (same case as the 8300) but the build quality is far superior (even though the 8300s are superb). Installed about 2 months ago, and not a single hitch along the way or since.

Someone mentioned that the HP use proprietary motherboards, well so do Dell, but they are more like tweaked Intel ones than custom made - but it's worth bearing in mind.

Also, it's definitely worth going back to your account manager at Dell and sending him the quote from Insight - they may surprise you. We got a great deals on our 20 workstations, whilst they only tweaked the cost downwards slightly, they did upgrade all the processors, additional memory and hard disks plus upgraded the tft screens to 18" UltraSharp ones.

Worth a try!

Re: Dell or HP???
 

Well....... Dell it was.... they offered another 3% discount (meant nothing really, i think i had already decided to have dell boxes) but they will be here on Friday :)

Thanks for all the advice etc.. :)

KP

Re: Dell or HP???
 

Dell do the thing with motherboards as well.

A friend of mine brought one on-line a few months ago, I had an old graphics card I was going to put on for him, opened it up - no AGP port!

Re: Dell or HP???
 

bit late now , but , where i work the decision to go for dell was volume discount :)

Re: Dell or HP???
 

I think if you buy one of their cheaper models with on-board graphics then they don't have an AGP pot, both of mine do, and the build quality is excellent. Shame the (Indian) customer service can let them down some times :(

Re: Dell or HP???
 

When I looked after my companies PCs I went with Dell, largely as they bundled software and had better price/performance. However I was far from happy with the reliability, we had numerous HD and monitor failures, within 4 years 70% of monitors had blown up. The notebooks, which admittedly had a tough time, lasted well except for the HD.

Customer service for anything in computers is a hiding to nothing, Dell may be better than the rest but don't set your expectations too high and you wont be disappointed.

I lost faith with them after buying 3 notebooks and debating about wifi, only to find the month after I placed my order a new model arrived with wfi inbuilt and cheaper. Probably my fault for not asking, but that really ****ed me off. It's symptomatic of Dells bad approach to business, they are more geared to the latest and greatest so older parts are not around as long.

My experience with HP/Compaq has been great, good spec, build and low price. HP Customer service is much better but geared more toward medium to larger companies, this is where Dell struggle to compete with service.

My choice today would be HP, but if you're a small company it probably doesn't really matter!