build or buy

[infinitelo]

i need about 7 computers at work.
gotta haves, 1ghz, 256mem 40gig hd
windows xppro, ms office standard.
lifecycle, about five years.

the options im looking at are:

1. buy whole system.
2. buy system with no os.
3. build from scratch.





if it is to be it's up to me

 

[nlm9802]

hmm, not sure if 1Ghz machines will last a 5 year life cycle.. 5 years ago today, the pentium 2 400 was king of the hill, like p4 3.2's are now, and they are not very useful at all today.

if you are set on 1ghz, ebay is probably the best place to get them. There are some companies liquidating what they have in bulk.

I would look into p4 2.0 or 2.4's, 512MB RAM, the 40GB hdd should be fine, win2k should be more common on 1ghz machines, so may have to buy the 7 xp pro licenses seperate. office should come with the bulk pc's otherwise seperate also.

a system like that can be built for about:
(onboard video/lan/sound, p4 2.4, 512 RAM, 40GB hdd, cdrom)
~$550 + xp pro, office xp= ~$800 per pc.
for that price, you may want to check out dell's refurbished pc's.. they may not all be the exact same, but you can opt for a 3 or 4 year onsite warranty, which is the approximate life cycle to expect from them.


I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. - R. McCloskey

 

[ceh4702]

A 1 Ghz Processor is 2 year old technology. I would advise against it. I would consider about a 2.6 Gig 800 Mhz P4 motherboard with integrated Video. Lowest I would go is about a 1.8Gig 400Mhz P4. I would look for some kind of package deal on parts. There may be some deals to be made.
It wouldnt hurt to go to DELL and ask them how much it would cost for all of them on the same order. I would call them up and see if you can get a bulk discount on their business website. Then you can see how much they would charge and use it as a baseline. I do not recommend a Celeron processor unless you are really strapped for cash.

We have used DELL Servers and we buy IBM computers but we buy a lot more of them than most people. Sometimes we purchase 100 Desktops on a single order. Being an Educational Institution we probably get a pretty good discount. I am guessing maybe 15% off the top. We have an exclusive IBM only deal with IBM for all our desktops. When we purchase Microsoft Office we get a special license that says we can use it at home also.

You have to decide what kind of cost is involved and what the company can afford for these computers to figure out how much to spend on each one. You probably should go with 17inch CRT Monitors. I have found that older keyboards last forever, but an optical mouse is a good investment.

I would consider buying as just one possible option. Building them all might be doable. I would recommend an Asus P4P800-VM motherboard with integrated NIC, Video, and Audio. Basic Black might be nice. If it is a budget killer, go with some 533 Mhz bus speed motherboard and you might save $20 or more on each computer. A 400 Mhz system is doable, but it may not be 5 year purchase proof. I would not run a Database using a Celeron processor. That is asking for trouble.

My take on this is that you will be the fall-guy if you buy weak technology. XP does requires at bare minimum 256 Megs of memory. I have seen Microsoft Office run out of memory at that level.


If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[franklin97355]

If you don't buy the systems don't forget to factor in the cost of 7 OS licenses.

 

[ceh4702]

A group license might be a way to save some money. Basically you pay for one license and media and then for additional licenses without the disk or media with the XP. This saves time and resources on behalf of Microsoft because you basically only buy one license with the media and then you install all of them from the same disk. You would think Microsoft would like this idea because there are fewer XP disks floating around.

Microsoft has offerred deals like 3 License sets for the home at a slightly reduced price. When a distributor or OEM buys 5 packs or 10 packs they also get a discount on the OEM product.

I was wondering a while back if it was possible to make a joint deal and buy computer software/hardware through a kind of a group or club so smaller businesses could save money by buying their equipment on one big order kind of like a wholesale group or a Cooperative. If you had some buddies in other businesses or companies you could group together and buy say 100 desktops and get a decent discount by putting it all on the same purchase order.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[infinitelo]

thanks for the quick responses, i thought 7 was a large order but apparently not big enough for steep discounts.

i did not take into account the extra resourses required by xp pro, i will take to hart the p4 option, and buy as much ram as i can. im replacing pent 200's that are 5 years old.

if it is to be it's up to me