Best PC

[jbar1]

We seem to give a lot of lip service to what we consider junk PCs. How about the best of the best. How many of you have had the chanch to work on Silicon Graphics PCs or flat panel displays? Probably not many cause they are very expensive and dont fail often plus they have a three year warranty. Ithink that the SGI PCs are the very best that you can buy. About $8,000 and up, not for everyone. Whats your choice??

[Snommis69]

No system can compare with one of my custom jobs, but if I had to pick a "major manufacturer" I would say Integraph makes some sturdy machines.

[jbar1]

Originally posted by Snommis69:
No system can compare with one of my custom jobs, but if I had to pick a "major manufacturer" I would say Integraph makes some sturdy machines.

We like to think the same about the systems we build here also and we do build some high end stuff and yes we think they are the best. SGI treats independent techs like real people and go out of their way to help us. But for a propriatary PC they are hard to beat. Cant say as I have seen an Integraph. Sounds like they are in the same class as SGI.

[paranoid]

IMHO, I can't go past these intel 815 boards. Get one with vid, sound and network on 'em and they fly! Combo with a P3 CPU and you have a nice little pc. Kind of cheap if you build it yourself.

[J189]

I'd say my favotite would be a nice new compaq................NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think a custom computer can usually beat a mass produced model, but thats just me

[theBeast]

At our store, we use Touch Systems. They are pretty solid built systems, and the number of problems are far less than other computers...and the majority of people who bring their systems in are because of Windows crashing, or user fault. It's rare that the hardware actually has a problem. They're also backed by a 3 year warranty.

All manufacturers have a low-end system, and a high-end system. Compaq has the Persarios which are built for Future Shop, Circuit City, Business Depot, etc who go for a price-point. PerSORRYo's have a 1 year warranty, and cruddy phone suport. Compaq also has the Deskpros, which are higher priced systems, but they have 3 year onsite warranty, and much better tech support.
Acer has the crappy Aspires, with 1 year warranty. They also have the Veritons with 3 year onsite warranty.
IBM has the Aptivas for low-end, and the PCs for high-end.
Synergio has the Avado for the low-end and Touch for the high-end.

We often tell our customers, "If price is your major concern, you'd probably be best to shop at Future Shop where you can get a complete system, with scanner, monitor, and printer for under $1000. If quality is your main concern, then buy the system from us."

Is pi$$es me off to no end when a customer brings a cruddy Pentium 133 suffering major problems into us. We determine that repairs on the system would cost more than what the system is worth, and suggest that they go with a new system. They go over our prices, and wind up buying a low-end system (such as a Craptiva, or a PerSorryo), THEN have the nu+s to bring it BACK into us because their cruddy Quantum Bigfoot hard drive just puked their entire system files. And why not bring it back to where they bought it? 1) It's too far to drive, or 2) They're 2 weeks past their 6 month warranty, and the store won't have anything to do with them without charging an arm and a leg for parts and labour.
Hmm...I guess ya shoulda bought from us, eh? Now we'll ram you through the nose! (Well, not obscenely charge them, just bump up our labour a bit)

[King Grover]

I don't know man, those SGI's are prett bad ***. However, we here do not get to work on them as much as I'd like to. The bigg badd boys here that I have to service are teh IBM Intellestation M-pro's. only a 733 processor, but with 1 gig of ram and 64 meg video. dual 9 gig ultra-wide scsi HDs. damn those machines can rotate a super heavy CAD drawing in realtime like it is a 5k file. sweet machines and quite expensive on their own.

[CPUMan]

As far as pride in ones work and pure pleasure, nothing beats picking out your parts from a local vendor and building a custom system for a customer or yourself. But if I were to pick a manufacturer who has done good work for me and my company, it would have to be Dell. My 2400 server is performing excellent and not one lick of problems.

[ricco]

Sharp Electronics make the best LCD monitors...New LLT1810 is a supurb monitor.....IBM as best laptop.....Compaq or HP as best servers and not time or tiny as best home PC...That would go to your own designed one..,.,..Do we all agree????

[exholt]

IBM, Dell, and Toshibas make good laptops from my experience....just stay away from the budget line...

Desktops....prefer building my own in the future...but for someone who does not have or want to learn computer hardware to support their own machines, Dell and IBM are ok(Don't know about aptivas...everyone I knew had IBM PS/1 Consultants or something else).

[TheLow1]

As the folks above have said. I also am a Dell fan, I have a Dell laptop and It is great.

[KINGofBLEH]

Packard Bell all the way!......What? They're out of business. OMG! I just don't think I can go on! LOL

Anyways, my custom builds are the best that I know of but when folks come to me wanting a recommendation for a factory job I usually assess their own level of competence:

Beginner - Dell or Gateway for the support.
Intermediate - HP. Parts are usually slightly better quality for a decent price.
Advanced - Micron (on a budget) or SGI (Money? An Object? hehe)

[LagerLagerLager]

For laptops and servers..but not desktops....I just can`t fault IBM.

The support and reliability are way beyond anyone else.

By the way, several people have mentioned Dell support. I have had nothing but trouble from their phone support yet I keep hearing all these good things about them.

Is it something I say???

[BurnFEST]

When it comes to desktop systems i prfefer to build my own, then i know exactly how it was buiolt and whats in it.
For production line systems, i like dell too, their desktgop have got to be the easiest to work on, i own one of their laptop (inspiron 8000, cant complain, runs like a dream), and their phone support is excellent, didnt even have to wait in a queue (Thats here in aus, might be different overseas).