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Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

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-Build only
-Buy prebuilt only
-Both build and buy prebuilt

This is the focus of a new TechRepublic poll. Tell us whether your IT department builds or buys desktops and why.

Topic

Pre-Built

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

I tried building our own but didn’t end up saving much, if any, money. Plus it took extra time that I don’t have. Then there’s the issue of warranties. With a prebuilt system you have one company and one warranty to worry about, build your own and you have a half dozen companies with different warranties from 90 days to 3 years.
We’ve been buying HP business systems, not the crappy home systems, for about a year now, each comes with a three year warranty and they’ve worked well for us. We had one with a bad hard drive, but I filled out a form online and got a new hard drive the next day, with pre-paid packaging material to ship the old one back.
We replace about a dozen computers a year.

Pre-built

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

for the community at large we have a contract with a major company to supplie all our laptops and PCs. We have a different contract with another company for all our big Unix (AIX) boxes. They are all pre-built and this way we partner with our vendors when there is problems. It was more cost efficient in our situation.

Prebuilt

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

We buy mainly pre-built Dell’s. Who has time to build their own anymore.

Both

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

For most employees we buy straight from a vendor. However, my group supports a number of research scientists that require high performance workstations and we often built these ourselves. Our negotiated pricing with our main vendor (IBM now Lenovo) is so good that we don’t bother with lower end systems. However the savings on high performance systems is still significant. We are right now waiting on the new intel chipsets to built out a number of new workstations this fall. When performance is not about convenience, building makes a lot of sense.

Prebuilt

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

I deal pretty much exclusivly with Dell. I just don’t have the time to build. Also, we get a 3 year warranty which has come in handy.

PreBuilt

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

In the office of 60, there are two machines that are not prebuilt. One is a security system, one is a workstation with a RAID for a specific purpose. Otherwise we have standard desktops and network backups – if the system dies we can rebuild it quickly.

James

Prebuilt

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

The only company I worked for that built their own only did it for two years. Because of BIO’s upgrades and adding new hardware, the systems could only be upgraded to a point.
Prebuilt you can get 3 year warrentys and next day service.

Both

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

Most of ours are prebuilt HP Business systems, we have specially made ghost image that we just replicate to the new systems as they arrive. New staff have everything they need on the spot and only minor configuration to get them onto the domain.
We found that we just dont have the time to build systems from scratch, and keeping track of all the paperwork and such.
Occasionally a custom system is required which we build ourselves, but that only occurs once every month or two.

BUY PreBuilt Desk Tops

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

I Build PCs for other People. The name of my Business is HOT ROD PCs. The reason I think people should buy PCs from people like me who BUILD PCs is because I, and people like myself (Hardware Techs and Engineers), usually spend half our day Reading and studying about Hardware Configurations, and what works best with what. Now the way most people are building parts now a days, that issue is becomming less and less of a Problem, however, many IT specialists are “Specialists” in other fields, they may know and understand the basics of how to Build a PC, but when you get right down to it, are they gonna know whether they should buy a 300 watt Power Supply or a 600Watt Power Supply for their System? Are they going to know enough to know whether they should go with Dual Xeon Chips, Quad Xeon Chips or your Average Pentuim D or Athlon 64 AMD Chip?
Are they going to know the difference between Loading their Memory in Dual Channel or not?
Are they going to know if a basic $15 Sound card is going to do for them, or would they rather have a Sound Blaster X-Fi? With Lots of Video Conferencing going on, do they know what kind of Video Card is going to serve them them Best?
And most of all will all the stuff they buy work well together? Or are they going to wind up with a Configuration nightmare?
Many IT people that Specialize in other fields, don’t want the aggrivation of Putting together a bunch of PCs. My Sister is a Programmer for People Soft, she couldn’t fix a Computer if her life depended on it! I think that we should value the work that people have a Passion for, and let them do the work. If you build your own Computers, pretty soon you will be cooking your own food, cutting your own hair, designing your own websites, fixing your own cars, making your own Music and Movies, and pretty soon you will be doing it to yourself, cause no one will want to know you anymore. When you involve others in your Success, then everyone is happy, everyone gets a piece of the action, and it benefits everyone. If you let people who have the Passion for Building Computers do the Work, you get a Better Built Computer. I know how to make Ice Cream, but I rarely ever do it.

Buy

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

When I first started (1989)there were very few “pre-built” computers. We would buy the best components and build our own. But as the market flourished we found it less expensive in time and money to buy ready made top of the line computers. Always with extended (3 year) onsite warranties.

Pre-built/Ghosted

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

We buy only pre-built desktops. Usually Dell Optiplexes. We then wipe it out and build a new platform. Using Ghost, we store the image and roll out the new workstations using that image. Takes 1/2 day to builf the platform and 1/2 hour to roll out each new workstation.

Hank Arnold

Pre-Built

In reply to Pre-built/Ghosted

We buy pre built Dell’s, use a ghost image, and then Deploy to push out the software, maximum time spent is about 90 minutes for each workstation. We do not have the time anymore to build systems plus they are so inexpensive now and we get a warranty from one vendor instead of several.

Pre-Built Only

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

Same reasons as above: time, money, warranties, etc. Add imaging.

We are in the business to manage networks, create software, etc and not building PC’s.

Sure, for a home PC/gamer system, build your own all the way. But for a business user (aka low hardware demands like Word, Excel, etc) there is no benefit to building ourselves.

buy prebuilt only

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

because we have just two people in my dept responsible for four geographically dispersed locations. so we buy only prebuilt system and the supplier provide support for whatever problem we cannot deal with in-house.

Whitebox

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

We have “whitebox” computers built to spec, then add the OS and all software in-house.

Prebuilt White box

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

We work with a local white box manufacturer (Seneca Data’s Nexlink brand) to buy custom configured prebuilt systems. Since they are located about 5 minutes from our office, we get a pre-production sample, build an image with our software pre-installed, then they image the entire production run for us at no extra charge. We typically buy 200-300 systems at a time, so this is a huge savings for us. Having them so close enables us to work directly with their engineering staff to work out any issues before delivery. The pricing is great, support is superb, & they use off the shelf parts, so when the warranty expires, parts are cheap.

Pre-built OEM (Mojority of the time)

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

Most of my systems are hp/Compaq (with the exception of some older Gateways and a few scattered low-end Acers for ‘non-critical’ users). Reason being are the same as everyone else has posted:
-price
-warranty length/single contact
-image stability

We had a CIO for a little while who had us try doing our own, but for the amount of time and money used, it was obviously cheaper to just go with a standard business-class desktop.

We do still do our own in a few cases, however, like for some servers (situations where a Supermicro costs half the price of a Dell of hp server and it’s function isn’t incredibly critical) and in our manufacturing plant where we need to have better cooling than most OEMs can provide.

Prebuilt w/extended warranties

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

Of the 800 plus PC’s out in the field we service, they are all prebuilt and have 3-4 year extended warranties. The life cycle for a desktop machine in our system is 4 years. For many years, the HP Vectra line was the norm, til the Compaq merge. Now it’s been IBM NetVista/ ThinkCenters. But with the Lenovo move, we’re thinking HP again.

Pre-built

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

We used to build our own, but it got to the point that we were paying more for parts wholesale than what the pre-built ones cost retail.

Both

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

We will buy a compontent from Dell or Gateway, but then image it with our apps.

I custom build for every customer

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

Mainly because I can have better Quality Control over the parts used and I can tailor the machines exactly for what is required rather than having people work within the limitations of the computers.

I learnt a new [b]Buzz Word at the last MS Road Show[/b] I’m not actually an IT Consultant any more I’m actually a [b]Stress Relief Provider[/b] as I get the computers in the business to work the way that the clients want so I’m not actually selling my services as an IT Consultant any more but I’m relieving Stress in the workplace. 😀

Col

This is of course…

In reply to I custom build for every customer

coming from MS. The center of most stress and anxiety when it comes to securing a network. I guess MS causes the stress and Consultants Relieve it, and in turn recommend more MS product.

Quite the symbiotic relationship.

I actually don’t think that MS had my solutions in mind

In reply to This is of course…

When they came out with this.

I push every MS Server application out the door and replace them with something that actually works and is secure. So that business don’t have licensing Issues or other problems with their servers.

Then on the Desktop where I’m more or less forced to use MS Products part way well the OS at the very least I tend to use other Software there that has no relation to MS except that it runs on Windows.

Actually the more that I look at Vista the more appealing Ubuntu looks to me.

Col

build only

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

cause danged if I’m going to pay for an ms os I’m not going to use. :p

actually, it’s far more cost effective for me to build than to buy prebuilt.
never mind the os issue of having ms bugware flavour of the week installed on prebuild systems.

Prebuilt

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

We buy prebuilt PC’s. Building them ourselves is not worth the hassle. Building them yourself acutally costs more. Besides, we get a corporate discount. Plus, there is one point of contact for all warranty claims.

Pre-built with custom image

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

We buy quarterly in bulk from HP. The local HP supplier applies our custom image (minus HP shovelware) before delivery.

We used to order white box and upgrade (had cases that were delivered as 386 that we surplused as P3/750) but the price differential no longer justifies not having the 3 year warranty. Also we no longer have enough staff to do the upgrading. We will custom build, or modify an off the shelf box only for special business requirements.

Build only

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

We build all of our desktops in-house. Cheaper that way; at least at last check. Probably need to re-evaluate one of these days, as pre-built prices come down.

Only time we’ve bought pre-built is when we needed a lot of systems in a short time-frame (new facility opening), and didn’t have staff to build that quickly. Even then we reformat and custom install.

PreBuilt – Corporate Sytems Need Vanilla

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

We only buy prebuilt. We have enterprise wide supply agreements where the suppliers are competing against each other to provide a product that meets our specs. We provide them with a Sysprepped version of our SOE and they drop it on each new machine that then is shipped to the site, plugged in and the build finishes by naming the machine correctly and joining the domain.
All equipment is leased on a 3 year turm over with a three year warranty. Rebuilds done by RIS on an as needed basis.

Build only image and pre-build hardware

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

The global company is made up of many purchased companies which are not yet fully incorporated into the whole. Some have their own IT and all. A corporate image is being worked on with many issues, as you can imagine. And with not all groups using the same software, OS, and settings, it is a real nightmare! (In fact when I started last year there were over 100 different images. Now we have it down to 5 for the machines we build in North America.)The plan once a corporate image is built, is to have the desktop vendor prebuild all desktops with the corporate image we provide them.

Oh wait you meant hardware! Prebuilt because we go through 20-60 machines every month.

Build Only

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

.
Nobody can specify and build exactly what we need better than ourselves.

Both build and buy prebuilt

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

We do both depending on the user and the department the desktop is going too.

Buy & Ghost

In reply to Both build and buy prebuilt

My two cents:

We buy desktop pcs from a local assembler (IBM m/b etc), then image them before dropping them on a desk. We might build a new image first, just so we have latest drivers/patches etc.

For servers same thing, except we actually assemble things – RAM, disks etc and then load the OS.

But build pcs? Not a great use of our time.

RIS/SCRIPT BUILD

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

Our company deploys PC’s with our company?s image so we do not get all the junk software that comes with the pre-build. We use RIS and scripted installs to get all the companies core applications completely unattended. This process takes about 1.5 hours but is completely unattended.

We also standardize on one vendor and just a few models. The drivers for all the models are part of the RIS image

RIS script

In reply to RIS/SCRIPT BUILD

Hi! My name is Herry. I’m a trainee in a company, in IT division.I already done for unattended installation for windows XP. Now i meet difficult to develope my RIS. I want to make unattended installation for application like adobe reader, microsoft office 2003, winrar, and also driver for sound card, NIC.Is there any script that can do like that. would you like to help me? thanks for the attention. My e-mail is bagifu83@yahoo.com

Prebuilt Hardware

In reply to Does your IT department build or buy prebuilt desktops?

For warranty purposes and we use a major manufacturer for component consistency (we used to utilise a local shop but the inconsistency with on-board components meant that we could easily wind up with 100+ hardware configs in a PC fleet of 500). We find this keeps our RIS images to a minimum and also has cut down dramatically on support calls and costs.

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