| From: William Park via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | I've been asked by few people about which desktop to buy. They are | technical enough to swap components, but definitely don't have time to | troubleshoot. They have more important things to do. So, I said any | brand, new or refurbished, except HP. | | Things may have changed, and HP may be good now. Which brand would you | recommend for desktop computer for business people?
It depends. For real business people, willing to spend a bit more, most manufacturers have a business (as opposed to consumer) line of computers. Or even lines. Brand names include: Lenovo Think*, Dell OptiPlex or Precision, HP something-or-other (Z? EliteDesk? they keep changing names), Acert Veriton. What follows are some hints of inexpensive not-new boxes. If you do care about price, you can get an off-lease business computer from a variety of places. But then you need to know what you are missing by having an old machine. My general rule is: Haswell and later processors are pretty safe. Those processors have 4 digit models that start with 4. Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge (2 and 3) use more electricity and probably don't come with USB 3 but are still useful. I have recently bought off-lease computers from refurb.io (look for sales) and Dell Financial Services (look for sales). For some reason, Haswell isn't showing up often. I suspect that since progress in processors has slowed down, companies are holding onto their computers longer. There is a second kind of discounted machines: open-box or refurbs. Actually "refurbished" is pretty confusing: sometimes it means computers returned by purchasers and checked over by a refurbisher; sometimes it means off-lease and checked over by a refurbisher. (The refurbisher might be the manufacturer or it might be a different company; it makes a difference.) I used to buy refurbs of the almost-new variety from Staples. They didn't always have them and they didn't always sell them at a good price. They moved that business to ebay. That's where my main desktop came from. <http://stores.ebay.ca/Staples-Canada> No desktops at the moment. Or laptops. Maybe they aren't doing this any longer. Dell Financial Services: <https://www.dellrefurbished.ca/> Deal ending today (but there will be more for Black Friday): <http://forums.redflagdeals.com/dellrefurbishedca-dell-refurbished-weekend-sale-40-desktops-30-laptops-20-monitors-until-nov-12-2141322/> Refurb.io's ebay store. 10% off with coupon PERFORM until Nov. 14: <https://www.ebay.ca/rpp/refurbio-coupon-1109/refurbio> This is a pretty good deal on an older business-class computer with monitor, keyboard and mouse (the keyboard and mouse I got from refurb.io a couple of months ago were horrible). This is a Sandy Bridge processor, an i5 2400 -- a decent older processor. This computer is also a business desktop but it has a Haswell processor. <https://www.ebay.ca/itm/HP-Elite-800G1-Tower-i5-4570-3-2ghz-8GB-Ram-500GB-HDD-Windows-10-Pro/122714693672> These have hard disks. For most purposes I'd install an SSD. Modern desktops (Windows and Linux) perform a lot better when running off SSDs. Only the system itself, not your files, need to be on the SSD. So a small one is OK. But 256G (bigger than necessary) is a sweet spot. RAM matters. I think that 2G is OK, not great. More is always better. This is more or less what I bought a couple of months ago. I paid less and mine probably had smaller resources. Note that these SFF computers have proprietary power supplies which are expensive to replace. <http://www.ebay.ca/itm/HP-Elite-8300-SFF-Desktop-i5-3470-3-2ghz-8GB-500GB-HDD-Windows-10-pro/122078090918> NMicroVIP is a pretty good source for almost-new Asus stuff. They have weekly deals. Only some of their prices are good. <http://www.nmicrovip.ca/> Not many desktops at the moment. There's lots of stuff on Kijiji. I would not want to explain how I figure out which offers are trustable. But I've had very good luck (touch wood). --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk