GW2K or Dell?

[Maureen Lindh]

Since no one else has yet made this point, I thought I'd throw in 2 cents
here. It is more important to buy good components than to buy a company
name (although I'd definitely count the warranty and support for
something). It would be best if the purchasing agent were aware of the
attributes of the motherboards, the BIOS and the chipsets as well as the
quality and compatibility of all the other components used in the systems.

The big name systems' components vary by the week and I've noticed that
quality-of-support and reliability survey results change by the month. I
suppose that a good reason to buy from one company might be to insure
consistency of your equipment in order to simplify support, but, I hate to
tell you, the only consistency may be among each _batch_ that you buy.
Don't expect the [Gateway] computers that you buy in January to be
consistent with the ones you buy in March even if they have the same
processors. I've found that systems with the same model name may come with
different motherboards and that the ones that the PC magazines test may not
contain the same components as the ones you buy.

You should get all the specs for the machines that you purchase in writing
and you should have somebody available that knows the implications of all
those choices. After all, you're probably spending tax payer money and you
should try to spend it well. Good luck.

___// Maureen Lindh  <lindh at olypen.com> 360-457-4464, fax 360-457-2580 \\___
   \\ NorthOlympicLibrarySystem, 2210 S Peabody, PT Angeles, WA  98362 //

At 02:35 PM 12/8/97 -0800, Judy Anderson wrote:
>We've been running Gateway 2000 machines in our student technology
>center for almost 2 years.  They have been great!  
>We have had a couple of monitors die, and a few drives, but with
>3000-6000 students a month using them I can't complain.  
>Gateway also gives excellent service for replacing the few parts we've
>had go wrong.  
>
>I haven't used Dell recently, but that's just because I had such erratic
>luck with them a few years ago. The "was this put together on a Monday
>or a Wednesday" syndrome. In checking with a few people here who ordered
>them, they still have some consistency problems, especially with their
>laptops.
>
>