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Long story short, for the past couple of years we’ve been buying Dell desktops and deploying them company wide. In an effort to cut cost, Dell has continued to stroll down that proprietary route; from power supplies, cable lengths, to power connectors, you name it.

Our latest gripe with Dell is their new machines shipping with 8 pin power connectors on the motherboard with a proprietary power supply.

IS/IT management has inquired about heading in a different direction.

I suggested Lenovo desktops, specifically, the ThinkCenter m83 line.

I was wondering if anyone had past experiences with Lenovo and knew if they are headed down that same proprietary route?

Any other suggestions would be much appreciated!

@Dell_Technologies @Lenovo

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Out of curiosity, what models are you buying? I’ve not run across those issue (other than the PSU having short cables, but that’s kinda par for the course).

Ultimately it’s six of one, half dozen of the other, I’ve used Lenovos and have been fairly happy with the quality, but IMO the support still leaves a bit to be desired, shipping parts out isn’t my cup of tea, i’d rather have a tech out next day to replace them. If that sounds fine to you you’ll probably find that lenovo works well for you.

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I’ve been deploying HP towers here. Haven’t had any issues with ordering 3rd party power supplies and such for repairs on the ones which are out of warranty. ProDesk 400 G1 is the model I’m currently deploying (specifically HP mfg #: E3U19UT). You can get them with varying amounts of drive space, RAM, etc. However, I imagine all of the parts are pretty standard to replace in all of the ProDesk 400 G1 variants. If a part goes bad within a year of buying the computer, it’s covered by HP under warranty.

As for Lenovo, I haven’t worked with those for a couple years. So, not sure if their parts are proprietary now, if they have warranties included, etc.

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Hey Christopher, thanks for checking out Lenovo! The ThinkCenter M83 would be great, I’d suggest chatting with our SMB sales team if you’re interested in getting more details (1-866-426-0911).

Are you leaning towards the tower or the tiny ?

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We use Acer desktops and are happy with them. Many are proprietary, but the do have good models that are also standard parts. Of course, as a manufacturer of parts, they use their own parts, but they are industry standards.

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We are a Dell shop as well. But as the older work stations are dying, I am building workstations instead of going with a brand name. NewEgg always has awesome deals on D.I.Y supercombos that make perfect workstations for under $400. The last one I found was $280. They usually come with everything you need (just watch some don’t include optical drives) except for an O.S and obviously you’ll need Office as well. Compare that to some $550-600+ workstations from Dell or other brands that you still need to buy Office for.

Check them out.

Oh and it’s 100% non-proprietary this way

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We’ve been purchasing the Optiplex line for years and Precision for power users.

The Optiplex 7020 has the 8 pin power connector and no 24 pin ATX power connector.

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Thanks HatterJBK, I will definitely look into the ProDesk series.

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We are leaning towards the tower, but ideally a mix would be fine. For us, the toward is easier to expand.

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Did not know that. Yeah, it can be a pain tracking down some of these parts, but the reality is that Dell is so big someone usually sells them and the price is about the same. I always get three year warranties, so it’s a while before I have to worry about it al all.

As far as Lenovo, I work with the Carbon’s. It’s about a two to three hours to go through all the updates that are needed before these things will function. I’m guessing the desktops are better. They’re definitely a player.

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This is more of a question then an answer. Any reason why you would not consider VDI? you would be hardware independent and cost of thin clients is pretty low. (I know licensing is expensive for other stuff but its justifiable though the amount of time is saves managing stuff.)

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We are also doing the HP ProDesk 400 G1 desktops (J6D33UT is the newest M/N). Before that was the 4000 SFF, then the 4300 SFF(all basically the same thing, just the newer version). They have 3 year warranties and I don’t think I’ve had any issues with them.

We buy from a local vendor who is also a warranty repair center, so they send a tech out to swap any parts that would go bad.

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Desktops for us are either OptiPlexes or ThinkCentres.

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What form factor? Almost every minitower I’ve seen has 24 pin plus a 4 pin CPU power connector. Not that it matters, you really don’t want to put a clone power supply, which is vastly inferior into a Dell.

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I’ve also used the Prodesk 400 and have been pretty happy with it.

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It’s the mini towers.

There are other users experiencing this.

Some have said that this issue can mess with x # of memory modules being recognized, etc. I’m not sure about that one though.

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Interesting, I’ve only worked with the USFF 7020s and that’s par for the course when working with that form factor.

From a “normal use” standpoint that shouldn’t be an issue, your life of that machine should be until the warranty is up or until it kicks the bucket anyway, but long term that’s not a good road to go down.

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We have been moving to a Lenovo shop here mostly using T4xx laptops, m73 and M93 AIO’s. No major issues to report. I would recommend them. :slight_smile:

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