Re: What then must we do?

["Sean \\The RIMBoy\\" <sean@rimboy.com>]

On 5 Feb 2004, Bryan J. Smith wrote:

> There are several 2nd tier OEMs.  Don't be afraid to go 2nd tier when
> you need Linux.  If enough people did that, then:
>   A)  You save your company time (which is money)
>   B)  You can now play off their price/services against your 1st tier
>   C)  Eventually a 1st tier will realize it's worth it

Well, depending on who you define as tier two then I'm having a hard time
using them.  We've tried and they've either gone out of business, their
hardware has not lasted as long as it should, or they've not provided the
level of support we can get.  Granted, we're mid sized university, but at
the same time my co-worker would love to do something other than Dell
Frankly, I'm not convinced his complaints are of merit, but at the same
time I'm willing to go elsewhere if they can provide what Dell gives us.

We've done some supermicro in the past.  Spec wise they should and often 
do blow the doors off of tier 1 systems.  On the other hand, support 
problems another dept has had with our local vendor has made me leery of 
the long term w/ that hardware.  I'd rather not have to order up 1U's from 
mwave.  They've decided that for their main servers Dell is the way they 
are going to go in the future.  

I'm curious to know who your tier 2 choices are.  

> You should _never_ tie your company to a _sole_ PC OEM.  You should
> have at least two.  That way, you can play each one of each other.

Well, we've never played them off each other for pricing.  While I agree
that's a good strategy, at the same time I'm paid to spec systems that
won't have issues or surprises.  I can find other ways for us to save
money.  More often than not when we ask our specialized hardware suppliers
who they suggest, they suggest Dell.  Cheap is good but not if you're
going to have problems down the road.  I'd rather not have the problem of
you're using this processor / hardware config and we think that's the
problem game.  It may not be true in all cases, but those are gambles we
don't want to take.

> I did this very well with Dell and Micron (although we were eventually
> forced to drop Dell at one company as they simply do not care about
> sub-400 employee companies).

Frankly, the horror stories I've heard about Micron have kept me away from
them.  At one point I was willing to suggest them but eventually their
quality took a turn for the worse.  Their stock was in the crapper too
which made me question their long term availability (nothing like buying a
system and then having them go out of business the next day).  Same with
Gateway.  After a successive string of problems that should have never
made it out the door we could no longer suggest purchasing hardware from
them.  I've already mentioned the issues I have with Compaq and HP.  
I've never been impressed with IBM desktop hardware either.  That's not to 
say that Dell's not had their share of issues, their decision to smoke the 
Rambus crack drove us to look at other options.  

That brings me back to Dell.  Yes, I'd would be more than happy to get off
the Dell pipe, but until other companies start doing what Dell does (and
I'm not talking about including the stuff people complain about) then I
don't forsee us using anyone else for Tier 1 anytime soon.

Sean...

--
The punk rock will get you if the government don't get you first.
	--Old 97's
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