@heterodox said:
This just goes to show how diverse experiences can be in the IT field and why overgeneralizations are all ignorant (Irony!).
We have five techs where I work. Only one would pick a new HP over a new Dell (and even then it's not a case of cake or death, but which gun do you want to be shot by?).
Then again, pretty much all the machines from the era of the dc7700's just never seem to die: the big ugly full plastic body Dell Optiplexes are a notable example: we've got three at work, one used by someone who remotes in occasionally and two as drop-in spares whenever someone has to bring their machine in and they for whatever reason need a loaner.
@heterodox said:
We have HP ProLiant servers that have chugged along for years without needing any maintenance whatsoever. I think occasionally hard drives have failed (most of our servers have RAID 5 or RAID 1+0 arrays), and we just order a new drive, pop the old one out, and replace it while the server's still running.
We had a newish Dell server come in that had a dead hard drive, and when a new hard drive was put it in pretty much killed it straight away. We've yet to figure out if the server itself is doing it, or if it's just bad hard drives that it's gotten. This week, a HP server needed a bigger hard drive because the idiots who sold it to the client thought that 2 RAIDed 72GB hard drives when they had a database that was almost that big was a good idea.
Apart from the insane 1.09GB firmware update for the hard drive (small drivers and the like has never been the strong point of HP, just look at their 97MB or thereabouts inkjet driver that doesn't have head cleaning functionality that my Epson's 15MB driver has), it would have been the best experience with HP that we have had in a long time (ie. ever)
@heterodox said:
I have been incredibly impressed by HP's dx series for desktops, the 6530b+ for laptops,
I and my coworkers have not been, with the exception of one who liked one of the HP ProBooks that came in. I liked that it had a catch on the lid, and not much else beyond that.
@heterodox said:
and the xw2400/xw4200 workstations.
Interestingly, this is another exception to the "HP machines are hopeless" rule: we've gotten a few refurbished ones in (The Boss has one at home and one as his work machine) and I can't fault them (apart from the ECC RAM which means we have to specially order it in for them, but it's a workstation so should be expected).
@heterodox said:
Again, diverse experiences. I can't recall any laptop I've ever bought that didn't have an operating system installation disc, either because I made sure it came with one or requested one. I even got one for a netbook that had no optical drive. (I have an external, so I was happy).
Must be an American thing. No machine sold off the shelf here comes with discs. Very few CTO machines offer it as an option. I know Toshiba's don't (having had the, erm, privilege, I guess, of setting a great number of them up I know what they do and do not come with), Asus' pop up boxes complaining about recovery discs, as do the odd HP that clients bring in to us to set up, and Lenovo's don't really talk about it for whatever reason (and will charge you AU$90 if you ask for a set of discs from them). The last Dell I saw had a Resource Disc but I don't know if this was part of a set that included a Windows or recovery disc or not.
Then again, you can always cheat and just use an OEM disc and the key on the COA. No crapware is always a bonus I find (have you seen how much crapware is shovelled on the average computer? Especially with a Toshiba, it is generally quicker to install Windows from an OEM disc, go to the Toshiba AU website only to find that they don't have a single driver for it (true story), then hop around the internet amongst Toshiba EU and Toshiba US and find a complete set of drivers for it then install them than it is to install the OS from the recovery image and decrapify it
(Side note: does anyone from the US know if Toshibas there do the same godawful thing that they do here, and recover the system to the user's choice of 32 or 64bit Windows on first boot, thus taking two hours or so to install the OS and crap you don't want or need only to be removed?)
@heterodox said:
I will freely admit that all Thinkpads I've used have been more than five years old
The older ones are generally regarded as the better ones. That said, after having handled some T420s's, I kinda wanted to steal one for myself... they were pretty sturdy, had lovely trackpad with a nice texture to it, the usual awesome keyboard, and decent resolution (1600x900 is quite nice, and made me feel like my 1280x800 on my 14" machine was inferior so so much).
@ender said:
Is this desktop or server support?
Desktop, and on a government contract as well. Kinda makes me wish Ipex still did exist. At least they were competent.
@ender said:
I guess the pile of HP-branded XP, Vista and 7 installation discs around my desk at work is a fragment of my imagination then (interestingly, for a long time HP desktops didn't include normal install discs - just their restore crap, which writes a pre-installed image with a bunch of crapware, but the install discs for laptops work just fine on desktops - and require no activation).
Either that, or you live in a different country to me and get them because that's part of your country's configuration (HP love changing the configuration on a country-by-country basis: I wondered why I couldn't find AMD drivers for a HP on their website when it turned out I was on the UK one and they only had the Intel variant there for whatever reason)
@ender said:
Is this desktop or server support?
Desktop, and on a government contract as well. Kinda makes me wish Ipex still did exist. At least they were slightly competent, even if they did go insolvent.
Then again, it could just be another case of HP, being an international US-based company, assuming that Australia is some backwater country and won't recognize substandard service when it comes our way.
@ender said:
I guess the pile of HP-branded XP, Vista and 7 installation discs around my desk at work is a fragment of my imagination then (interestingly, for a long time HP desktops didn't include normal install discs - just their restore crap, which writes a pre-installed image with a bunch of crapware...
Either that, or aren't in Australia and get them because that's part of your country's configuration (HP love changing the configuration on a country-by-country basis: I wondered why I couldn't find AMD drivers for a HP on their website when it turned out I was on the UK one and they only had the Intel variant there for whatever reason... at least they're better than Epson who use a completely different model name and number in the US, the UK and Asia\Pacific) or live in Australia and manage to get them some other way (if this please tell me how because it might prove useful if its easily doable).
@ender said:
but the install discs for laptops work just fine on desktops - and require no activation
The expected Magical OEM Auto Activating Thing that checks the BIOS to make sure that it's being used on a HP would match because they're both HP's, unless it's one of the weird ones which had Asus boards and came up as Asus machines as a result for whatever stupid reason.