[clue-tech] Need new hardware (was two monitors)

[Angelo Bertolli]

erik at ezolan.com wrote:

>>Current client has provided me with a thinkpad T30.  Piece of junk, nice
>>box, but has been dropped on it's head once or twice too many times, the
>>USB
>>ports drop a lot.  Otherwise it does the job.  Still, I've got 3 19"
>>monitors spread all over the home office, I don't really need the dual
>>head
>>or care to pay for the power and deal with the extra radiation (I'm half
>>blind already).  I have to play windows to make nice with everybody else -
>>but do the real work on a dinky linux box in back (cygwin and ssh).
>>
>>So now comes the question:
>>
>>I need something with a little more oomph in the Linux department.  I do a
>>lot of database work, I'm self-employed (i.e. not a lot of excess cash).
>>At
>>least 4 disks and 2GB of RAM.  I've got my eye on a Dell PowerEdge 830 for
>>about $900 (P4 2.8Ghz - single core, 2GB, 1 160GB SATA drive (I'd plug in
>>three more I have here)).  What would the group look at in my shoes?
>>
>>(The 4 disks is to spread the load across spindles.
>> I am currently using a P3 with 700MB of RAM and three disks.
>> CPU is 90% idle.  Disk and Memory are bottlenecks)
>>    
>>
>
>I'm not sure about getting a Dell as your main, incoming producing PC. If
>nothing bad happens, great. But if something does, and it stops working,
>you'll be on the phone for 5 hour convincing them that they need to fix
>it.
>
>For the technically minded, building your own PC is *easy*. And if
>something happens, and you need it to get fixed *right now*, you can run
>over to Compusa and pick up the part you need.
>
>If it's your income producing PC, all problems need to be fixed *right
>now*, and warranties on parts are far easier to invoke than warranties on
>whole machines.
>
>Now, it's possible to go buy a corp-made machine that's reliable and has a
>responsive warranty service. But not on a budget.
>  
>
Yeah, I think I'll add some of my own experience to this.  I bought a 
computer a few months ago.  This is the very first computer that I 
bought pre-made and it was from Dell.  Because of the price comparison 
new vs diy these days, I decided to give it a chance.  But this is 
probably the last time.  It's not that I have any complaints, and if you 
look at the numbers, I did get a very good deal considering I got 
everything:  case, psu, hard drive, etc.  But in the end, I don't think 
I got everything I wanted:  in particular expandability and 
upgradability.  At least I got Windows XP with it.