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Hey there, I work for an IT Consulting firm in Seattle and would like to start looking for a vendor alternative to Dell. We have always supported Dell Business workstations/servers because of their ease of warranty service and standardized service tag system, and simplicity to purchase.

Recently it has become apparent that something is wrong with Dell as their sales staff no longer cares, and their product line is eclipsed by older designs and consumer garbage being sold as business gear (e.g. inspirion), and their warranties are resembling a Faustian choice (Pro-Support, Basic Support, 3 Day, 2Day, etc)

Is there another vendor that might be a little friendlier to Small Business? We aren’t looking to become a reseller (Dell has never paid us a commission on the millions of dollars worth of equipment we have sent their way) and other than some goofy consultant network offering “trinkets and beads”.

I despise HP, and am curious about Lenovo, although their partner program seems to be geared toward a stack em deep, sell em cheap type of business.

Thanks!

@HP @Dell_Technologies

5 Spice ups
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Dell and HP are your to big choices. there are other smaller choices

Lenovo

Fujitsu

Toshiba

Acer

etc

but for the complete package there is really only the big 2 left

3 Spice ups
3

You might want to try posting this somewhere besides the Dell forum if you really want an answer to your question.

But I can’t let the Inspiron slam go. Since when did Dell call them “Business-class” machines? I certainly have never seen that.

7 Spice ups
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Ugh, the posting wizard said this was the best forum…I’ll post it in the hardware forum.

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Dell has been restructuring and has had a few bumps along the way, but all-in-all still a good company to go with. I encourage you to reconsider. Everyone has their bad days in tech support and I have had a few with Dell as well but overall it’s been outstanding.

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I know you said you despise HP… But I am switching to HP…

Also where my brother works (they have over 4,000 IT workers, and is a world wide company), is switching to HP as Dell now has too many issues.

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So what do you like about HP? I avoided HP because

  • The DV4000 Laptop recall issue because of a faulty NVidia GPU thermal coupling cost me clients.
  • They ruined Compaq
  • Their Tandoori flavored support is worthless
2 Spice ups
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What kind of volume are you talking about?

If you are moving enough volume you could build them yourself, but that would require customers who understand and value quality - which is effing rare.

1 Spice up
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I can only say I’ve had amazing service from the consumer side of HP. I’ve had a chance to work on some older laptops and desktops that are still chuggin’ away. I have a desktop with all original parts from 2001 still running strong. Slow compared to today’s computers, but still smooth.

We’re a Dell shop here at work, to which I have 0 complaints either, but I seem to never have any of the issues others do. Can’t say why, but I’ll take it! Everyone’s bound to catch issues with one brand or another, but the grass always looks greener from the other side.

2 Spice ups
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Do you run all your gear on ups’s?

I seem to have seen a correlation between no ups AND bad power, and cheap mobo’s.

It’s rare to see quality components on a biz desktop, and never happens on their ‘entry’ models.

When I switched to custom builds using quality motherboards, my mobo failure rate dropped to zero.

They become obsolete before they fail.

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We’re pretty much a dell shop here, and we’ve never had a problem (so far, touch wood) with Dell support. While I get to know the instant I have a problem with anything on my virtualized environment (blades, chassis, san, disks etc) - I’ve never had to call to get a new disk on the way. I’ve recently signed up for a service from Dell (free) in which, if my san/blades/chassis phones home with a problem, the new part is on the way before I get into work the following day. I also get follow up calls to ascertain the status until its fixed - after that I get a call to confirm they can close the ticket opened by the phone home.

I’ve got no experience with HP.

Lenovo - having worked within the IBM environment - didnt have any issues with parts from them either - no major delays, sending of wrong parts etc.

It should be kept in mind my support is enterprise level - not used the consumer support, as I source and build my own machines for home use.

G

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My preference is:

Servers - HP Proliant DL3xx series
Laptops - Lenovo ThinkPads
Desktops - Either HP or Lenovo, depending what exact configuration I need

I haven’t really seen a need to keep the 3 classes of machines in the same vendor camp. Laptops and desktops all need their own images anyway, so vendor becomes a non-issue at that point. And really, when you’re spending $700 on a desktop machine, there really isn’t that much different in them anyway.

1 Spice up
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I’m afraid you are probably stuck between HP and Dell.

We use Dell for exactly the same features that you posted, ease of use, service tags blah blah and have no problems with their quality and support. I’ve only needed their support on a few occasions and it’s always been smooth and easy.

Good luck finding similar service and ease for the price. Let us know how you go.

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I agree that Dell has had its ups and downs, but if you push for a dedicated sales rep, it makes a huge difference. You can also provide them with a hardware spec that you want to stick with for the duration of one of their product lifecycles (for example, you can spec a Latitude laptop and ask your rep to refer to it whenever building an order). You can even go deeper than that if you want.

Every big company seems to have its fair share of issues, but Dell has been very good when I worked with my sales rep to get things right.

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It depends on what you are looking for and your price point. For servers Dell and HP. I purchase Dell servers with 5 years warranties, 7x24x365. They do a good job supporting the hardware and they are less then HP. I do call at all hours of the day and they do show up. We only use dell for hardware support, we use Microsoft for software support.

You mentioned the inspiron line…For consumer line stuff, Dell is ok but there are others just as good if not better. It really depends on what you want. I then to stay away from their consumer lines except for the XPS line.

For business line the OptiPlex desktop is solid. I deploy between 30 and 100 a year for the last 12 years and they are stable. Easy to build an image with and easy to work on. I get the basic warranty on these.

When I consulted I always had my clients buy the hardware themselves. I would give them the spec and or quote. In several instances we purchased off of the dell outlet store.

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Although I would hate to see you avoid Dell, I can certainly understand your concerns and yes Dell is adjusting to market demand. Just a few years ago, an ad in a magazine or on TV likely would have featured a desktop but it’s shifted to laptops and tablets and so too has the software industry. Dell is an international company and in changing to meet the changing needs around the world, must make changes within and yes, it can mean changes and disruptions in the service you have become accustomed to.

I equate the industry to a large aircraft carrier. Incredibly powerful and it delivers a mighty punch but when the scope of it’s focus requires change, it takes a slow and mighty effort to turn it in the new direction and reach that destination. What once was desktops and laptops has become tablets and very powerful laptops with little talk of desktops… and an increased demand for incredible amounts of storage and server power. The next few years are going to be very interesting for the industry and Dell is changing to meet that demand.

Hang in there. Dell is a world-class leader in technology and I believe is positioning itself, not for the short run, but long term needs.

PM me if you have specific concerns and I will be glad to address any concerns and needs.

-shawn

1 Spice up
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No, only the most important PCs are on UPS. Everything is on Surge Strips though. I’ve only had a handful of times I’ve had to call for service, and it’s usually because someone knocked over their computer while trying to move it on their own.

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Have you looked at partnering with a company that can provide multiple brands like CDW rather than vendors directly?

I found CDW very easy to deal with and share volume discounts between all of the clients I was supporting. Lots of similar alternatives.

2 Spice ups
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I worked in a Dell environment for years (a state university), and Dell had been quite good to us. I know you despise HP, but their Elite Books and pro-liant servers are pretty good. At my current job we have begun to move towards Lenovo machines. Much of our development group has been using them, and so far our devs have been quite happy with them.

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We tried to move away from Dell and dip our toes in other waters, Lenovo was our first try and the first couple of workstations (ThinkCentres) were very nice, however once they pushed out Windows 8 on them, it became a huge headache. We traditionally clean wipe every system we get in and install a fresh copy of Windows 7 Pro SP1, no matter which hardware vendor, there’s always some bloat. Lenovo started using BIOS embedded Windows keys, making it near impossible to do this, especially buying a system with Win8 and downgrading to Windows 7. The only way to actually do this is to use the recovery discs that come with the system, but, surprise, restore them to factory OEM, with everything included. It might sound like wiping is the easy way out rather than just uninstall what I don’t need, I just found their support to not really care and just wanted us to buy new recovery discs rather than give me a way to recovery or even provide me with valid Win7 keys that I thought I paid for when I bought the system.

We use HP for Pro and Elite Books and they’re nice, however their desktops seem to be more expensive than DELL. We are a CAD house so we need high end system with lots of RAM, processor speed and video cards and DELL provides the best bang for the buck that I’ve seen. Even through all the restructuring turmoil, I can still order a system and have it delivered in less than a week and it allows me to do what ever I want with it, keys included.