Dell has completely gone to shit. HP is bad, but Dell is basically "so bad it's seriously comical"-bad
In terms of quality, there's little daylight between the two these days. They both use proprietary motherboards and psu's and they both use dated, aged cases that use 20 year old tooling.
What Dell exceeds at compared to HP is the fucking warranty shenanigans.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Basically, if you want a gaming PC, you don't want a Dell or HP or Lenovo or any of them, ever.
I haven't bought a pre-built PC since my first one as a wee boy in 1996, but non-standard parts would be a total killer for me. The main reason to go desktop PC is upgradeability, and if you don't get that.... gah!
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
I haven't bought a pre-built PC since my first one as a wee boy in 1996, but non-standard parts would be a total killer for me. The main reason to go desktop PC is upgradeability, and if you don't get that.... gah!
Yeah, all the SI's like IBP or Cybepower, Maingear, and what have you all use commercial off-the-shelf parts and you can upgrade them, etc.
The OEM's actively work to make upgrading impossible and create a massive amount of e-waste due to non-reusable parts.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
I'm sure it's a settings thing or something but it was extremely hilarious this morning when I got the following info in my windows update queue:
"This PC doesn't currently meet all the system requirements for Windows 11"
I bought this machine earlier this year. It's not the highest possible specs but it's a pretty damn high medium.
Probably TPM turned off, especially if it's a custom/home built computer.
I bought it pre-built from iBuyPower, but yeah. Friggin' lawl.
They're not a hallmark of quality. I'm sure they just don't enable tpm as part of their builds in general though.
They're actually better than most of the big name OEMs these days. I'd trust an IBP build over a Dell or HP.
I get that most OEMs are pretty bad, and that they may be better than a lot of those OEMs, but that doesn't make them good. I've seen way too many come in with graphics cards rattling around inside the case (or missing altogether), coolers not attached, missing RAM, incorrect CPUs.. they're just not great.
I'm sure it's a settings thing or something but it was extremely hilarious this morning when I got the following info in my windows update queue:
"This PC doesn't currently meet all the system requirements for Windows 11"
I bought this machine earlier this year. It's not the highest possible specs but it's a pretty damn high medium.
Probably TPM turned off, especially if it's a custom/home built computer.
I bought it pre-built from iBuyPower, but yeah. Friggin' lawl.
They're not a hallmark of quality. I'm sure they just don't enable tpm as part of their builds in general though.
They're actually better than most of the big name OEMs these days. I'd trust an IBP build over a Dell or HP.
I get that most OEMs are pretty bad, and that they may be better than a lot of those OEMs, but that doesn't make them good. I've seen way too many come in with graphics cards rattling around inside the case (or missing altogether), coolers not attached, missing RAM, incorrect CPUs.. they're just not great.
Yeah nah, I'd take a shipping mishap or a missing stick of RAM that takes a bit to get sorted out over throwing the entire PC out in 3 years because its out of warranty and its proprietary garbage PSU just died.
Basically, if you want a gaming PC, you don't want a Dell or HP or Lenovo or any of them, ever.
It really depends. I got a HP Omen 25l during the GPU shortage, when you couldn't buy anything (CPU, GPU or sometimes even memory), even if you were willing to spend 2 or 3 times of the retail price.
This PC got a Intel i7 10700, 16GB DDR4, Geforce RTX 3070, 1TB WD Black SSD, 550W Gold rated PSU from Coolermaster. I certainly could do better nowadays with customized parts, but the HP uses standard ATX parts which are user replaceable. The layout of the PC case is fine, I didn't notice any heat related shenanigans. It even got a nice GPU holder screwed into the front which also fits other brands of GPUs.
The business models of the three big AIO vendors Lenovo, HP, Dell (which come with W10 pro or W11 pro) are clearly defined into workstations and Office-PCs in the B2B space. Most of the Office PCs can't even be preconfigured with GPUs at all (Lenovo, HP).
Customer line (everything with Win 10/11 Home) is really muddy and often resembles a thrift shop of previous B2B models and unsold parts - thats my experience. Its still stupid, because all of the vendors have okayish gaming lines which they cannibalize (Lenovo Legion, HP Omen, Dell - Alien Ware).
Anyways, I often have the feeling that Youtubers pick the the worst prebuild they can find to review it and make a show out of.
Dratatoo on
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
I'm sure it's a settings thing or something but it was extremely hilarious this morning when I got the following info in my windows update queue:
"This PC doesn't currently meet all the system requirements for Windows 11"
I bought this machine earlier this year. It's not the highest possible specs but it's a pretty damn high medium.
Probably TPM turned off, especially if it's a custom/home built computer.
I bought it pre-built from iBuyPower, but yeah. Friggin' lawl.
They're not a hallmark of quality. I'm sure they just don't enable tpm as part of their builds in general though.
They're actually better than most of the big name OEMs these days. I'd trust an IBP build over a Dell or HP.
I get that most OEMs are pretty bad, and that they may be better than a lot of those OEMs, but that doesn't make them good. I've seen way too many come in with graphics cards rattling around inside the case (or missing altogether), coolers not attached, missing RAM, incorrect CPUs.. they're just not great.
Yeah nah, I'd take a shipping mishap or a missing stick of RAM that takes a bit to get sorted out over throwing the entire PC out in 3 years because its out of warranty and its proprietary garbage PSU just died.
Again, I know the big three are kinda crappy. HP has gotten better, though I still wouldn't buy a gaming computer from them. I've just seen these issues just in the store I work out of, and I know our internal forum is full of stories from iBuyPower coming in just jacked.
I'm sure it's a settings thing or something but it was extremely hilarious this morning when I got the following info in my windows update queue:
"This PC doesn't currently meet all the system requirements for Windows 11"
I bought this machine earlier this year. It's not the highest possible specs but it's a pretty damn high medium.
Probably TPM turned off, especially if it's a custom/home built computer.
I bought it pre-built from iBuyPower, but yeah. Friggin' lawl.
They're not a hallmark of quality. I'm sure they just don't enable tpm as part of their builds in general though.
They're actually better than most of the big name OEMs these days. I'd trust an IBP build over a Dell or HP.
I get that most OEMs are pretty bad, and that they may be better than a lot of those OEMs, but that doesn't make them good. I've seen way too many come in with graphics cards rattling around inside the case (or missing altogether), coolers not attached, missing RAM, incorrect CPUs.. they're just not great.
Yeah nah, I'd take a shipping mishap or a missing stick of RAM that takes a bit to get sorted out over throwing the entire PC out in 3 years because its out of warranty and its proprietary garbage PSU just died.
Again, I know the big three are kinda crappy. HP has gotten better, though I still wouldn't buy a gaming computer from them. I've just seen these issues just in the store I work out of, and I know our internal forum is full of stories from iBuyPower coming in just jacked.
Unless you’re going boutique like Maingear, things are always risky when a constructed computer is mailed.
You can fix a computer. You can’t fix thousands of tons of ewaste from proprietary hardware.
I'm sure it's a settings thing or something but it was extremely hilarious this morning when I got the following info in my windows update queue:
"This PC doesn't currently meet all the system requirements for Windows 11"
I bought this machine earlier this year. It's not the highest possible specs but it's a pretty damn high medium.
Probably TPM turned off, especially if it's a custom/home built computer.
I bought it pre-built from iBuyPower, but yeah. Friggin' lawl.
They're not a hallmark of quality. I'm sure they just don't enable tpm as part of their builds in general though.
They're actually better than most of the big name OEMs these days. I'd trust an IBP build over a Dell or HP.
I get that most OEMs are pretty bad, and that they may be better than a lot of those OEMs, but that doesn't make them good. I've seen way too many come in with graphics cards rattling around inside the case (or missing altogether), coolers not attached, missing RAM, incorrect CPUs.. they're just not great.
Yeah nah, I'd take a shipping mishap or a missing stick of RAM that takes a bit to get sorted out over throwing the entire PC out in 3 years because its out of warranty and its proprietary garbage PSU just died.
Again, I know the big three are kinda crappy. HP has gotten better, though I still wouldn't buy a gaming computer from them. I've just seen these issues just in the store I work out of, and I know our internal forum is full of stories from iBuyPower coming in just jacked.
Unless you’re going boutique like Maingear, things are always risky when a constructed computer is mailed.
You can fix a computer. You can’t fix thousands of tons of ewaste from proprietary hardware.
I think you massively overstate the failure rate of PC's from the big OEM's like Dell and HP. Yes, Dell components will fail, but Dell/HP also makes orders of magnitude more PSU's than a company like Corsair will in a year, so even if they have a similar failure rate, Dell and HP will just have *more* failures.
As for them being proprietary in some cases, yeah they are. But they're also designed to not be overbuilt for the machine. If they determine a specific line of computers needs a 450W PSU, they'll build a 450W PSU for it. It doesn't have extra bits/overhead that it doesn't need, which means less raw materials going into said PSU, which does help reduce e-waste. OEM's like Dell and HP spend more money on engineering than a company like corsair makes in total revenue to build products that sell millions of units every year. The scale they operate is just... different.
remember it is in the interests of the OEM to not make products with high failure rates, even when out of warranty. If your computer dies 1 month out of warranty, you're going to be mad and less likely to buy that brand again. but if you get 6-7 years out of that computer, you're more likely to buy that same brand.
And for every failure, there are tons of people who have no issues whatsoever. My grandmother has a 10 year old acer that I've put an SSD in and otherwise is still going strong. there are a lot more than those than there are failures.
I'm sure it's a settings thing or something but it was extremely hilarious this morning when I got the following info in my windows update queue:
"This PC doesn't currently meet all the system requirements for Windows 11"
I bought this machine earlier this year. It's not the highest possible specs but it's a pretty damn high medium.
Probably TPM turned off, especially if it's a custom/home built computer.
I bought it pre-built from iBuyPower, but yeah. Friggin' lawl.
They're not a hallmark of quality. I'm sure they just don't enable tpm as part of their builds in general though.
They're actually better than most of the big name OEMs these days. I'd trust an IBP build over a Dell or HP.
I get that most OEMs are pretty bad, and that they may be better than a lot of those OEMs, but that doesn't make them good. I've seen way too many come in with graphics cards rattling around inside the case (or missing altogether), coolers not attached, missing RAM, incorrect CPUs.. they're just not great.
Yeah nah, I'd take a shipping mishap or a missing stick of RAM that takes a bit to get sorted out over throwing the entire PC out in 3 years because its out of warranty and its proprietary garbage PSU just died.
Again, I know the big three are kinda crappy. HP has gotten better, though I still wouldn't buy a gaming computer from them. I've just seen these issues just in the store I work out of, and I know our internal forum is full of stories from iBuyPower coming in just jacked.
Unless you’re going boutique like Maingear, things are always risky when a constructed computer is mailed.
You can fix a computer. You can’t fix thousands of tons of ewaste from proprietary hardware.
I think you massively overstate the failure rate of PC's from the big OEM's like Dell and HP. Yes, Dell components will fail, but Dell/HP also makes orders of magnitude more PSU's than a company like Corsair will in a year, so even if they have a similar failure rate, Dell and HP will just have *more* failures.
As for them being proprietary in some cases, yeah they are. But they're also designed to not be overbuilt for the machine. If they determine a specific line of computers needs a 450W PSU, they'll build a 450W PSU for it. It doesn't have extra bits/overhead that it doesn't need, which means less raw materials going into said PSU, which does help reduce e-waste. OEM's like Dell and HP spend more money on engineering than a company like corsair makes in total revenue to build products that sell millions of units every year. The scale they operate is just... different.
remember it is in the interests of the OEM to not make products with high failure rates, even when out of warranty. If your computer dies 1 month out of warranty, you're going to be mad and less likely to buy that brand again. but if you get 6-7 years out of that computer, you're more likely to buy that same brand.
And for every failure, there are tons of people who have no issues whatsoever. My grandmother has a 10 year old acer that I've put an SSD in and otherwise is still going strong. there are a lot more than those than there are failures.
Power supplies now have 10 year warranties.
And their 450W PSU is far less power efficient than a 3rd party 450W power supply. They had to be forced by law to comply with the bare minimum 80 Plus standards, and their power draws are all still significantly worse.
Nah we use Dell laptops for work. Its like the things have little bombs in them to fail a month after the warranty runs out.
Theres a reason for businesses the OEMS sell warranty packages with onsite support. You sneeze at them the motherboard fails.
Anecdotes. My anecdote is working for 13 years in three different companies that all used Dell was maybe one or two failures per year across staff between 150 and 200 people.
Not saying they don't fail, and i have my issues with all the OEM's for different reasons. but their failure rates are not going to be all that different than industry average. There's just physically *more* of them in the world than prebuilts.
And there are always exceptions to the rules. in 2005-ish the Dell Optiplex GX 270 had a known issue of a bad capacitor that would fail. We had 50 of them at a workplace and I had to get all 50 replaced over the course of about 18 months. It was an acknowledged issue to the point that Dell would replace them for free out of warranty. but the GX 280, the next model in that line, was rock solid, since you know Dell didn't want that to happen again. Don't think we had a single failure on that line.
For business use OEMS are really the only option. You'd really have to push me to buy one as a personal machine.
Prebuilts work on a razor-thin profit margin. I think that's why the build quality often suffers.
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Ear3nd1lEärendil the Mariner, father of ElrondRegistered Userregular
For desktops, I definitely build my own. But laptops are a different story. I've had 2 Dells and 2 Lenovos in the last 15 years, and the Lenovos were better machines.
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
For desktops, I definitely build my own. But laptops are a different story. I've had 2 Dells and 2 Lenovos in the last 15 years, and the Lenovos were better machines.
In terms of laptop build quality, it is Apple, Lenovo, and everyone else.
Like, the gulf is wide between those two and the rest of the market. Maybe you could put the Surface line in there.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
For desktops, I definitely build my own. But laptops are a different story. I've had 2 Dells and 2 Lenovos in the last 15 years, and the Lenovos were better machines.
In terms of laptop build quality, it is Apple, Lenovo, and everyone else.
Like, the gulf is wide between those two and the rest of the market. Maybe you could put the Surface line in there.
Apparently the new Razer Blades are top notch build quality.
For desktops, I definitely build my own. But laptops are a different story. I've had 2 Dells and 2 Lenovos in the last 15 years, and the Lenovos were better machines.
In terms of laptop build quality, it is Apple, Lenovo, and everyone else.
Like, the gulf is wide between those two and the rest of the market. Maybe you could put the Surface line in there.
Got tape a newer Surface its a pretty sweet looking machine
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Ear3nd1lEärendil the Mariner, father of ElrondRegistered Userregular
For desktops, I definitely build my own. But laptops are a different story. I've had 2 Dells and 2 Lenovos in the last 15 years, and the Lenovos were better machines.
In terms of laptop build quality, it is Apple, Lenovo, and everyone else.
Like, the gulf is wide between those two and the rest of the market. Maybe you could put the Surface line in there.
I have an older Surface Pro and it's a solid piece of kit.
I've had two Alienware laptops, the most recent a 2017 vintage that's still my daily driver, and the things are absolute tanks, the newer one more so. Rock solid machine (as it should be for that size & weight, admittedly).
Still got an old 13" Dell Latitude that was my mum's, bought second-hand ex-business, and that thing also appears to be un-killable.
For desktops, I definitely build my own. But laptops are a different story. I've had 2 Dells and 2 Lenovos in the last 15 years, and the Lenovos were better machines.
In terms of laptop build quality, it is Apple, Lenovo, and everyone else.
Like, the gulf is wide between those two and the rest of the market. Maybe you could put the Surface line in there.
Ehhhh I buy surfaces for work and I've had about 20 (out of about 150) fail in some way (either the keyboard stops working, it goes into a boot loop, or the hard drive fails) in less than 3 years
Also, apple's build quality for their laptops are pretty notoriously bad in recent years, with bad thermal and power delivery design, not to mention how serviceable they are.
For desktops, I definitely build my own. But laptops are a different story. I've had 2 Dells and 2 Lenovos in the last 15 years, and the Lenovos were better machines.
In terms of laptop build quality, it is Apple, Lenovo, and everyone else.
Like, the gulf is wide between those two and the rest of the market. Maybe you could put the Surface line in there.
Ehhhh I buy surfaces for work and I've had about 20 (out of about 150) fail in some way (either the keyboard stops working, it goes into a boot loop, or the hard drive fails) in less than 3 years
That's far more luck than we've had. Pretty much all the Surfaces we've had were awful. People keep requesting them, suffer with their various issues for awhile, then they come back and request swapping them out with a Dell or Lenovo that actually works. If they're stubborn they'll have us RMA the thing. But so far, we've never had a lifecycle replacement where someone wanted another Surface.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
For desktops, I definitely build my own. But laptops are a different story. I've had 2 Dells and 2 Lenovos in the last 15 years, and the Lenovos were better machines.
In terms of laptop build quality, it is Apple, Lenovo, and everyone else.
Like, the gulf is wide between those two and the rest of the market. Maybe you could put the Surface line in there.
Apparently the new Razer Blades are top notch build quality.
Yes but Razer focuses on thinness so the thing runs as hot as the surface of the sun.
Also, apple's build quality for their laptops are pretty notoriously bad in recent years, with bad thermal and power delivery design, not to mention how serviceable they are.
Yeah, Apple has had stupid design flaws for years that they have the bad habit of denying until years later than whoops, yeah it's thing. For this years machine only though according to the repair program, even though the next year uses the same thing etc.
So unless you need Apple for some reason Lenovo.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
For desktops, I definitely build my own. But laptops are a different story. I've had 2 Dells and 2 Lenovos in the last 15 years, and the Lenovos were better machines.
In terms of laptop build quality, it is Apple, Lenovo, and everyone else.
Like, the gulf is wide between those two and the rest of the market. Maybe you could put the Surface line in there.
Apparently the new Razer Blades are top notch build quality.
Yes but Razer focuses on thinness so the thing runs as hot as the surface of the sun.
We've gone through a pile of Surface Pros. I won't buy them anymore. I'm not shipping something off for warranty, I want someone to swing by and fix it the next day. My battery went and then shortly after the HDD went and it was just out of warranty. Both things I can easily fix myself in a standard Dell laptop for what, 70 bucks for a battery, and 100 for a drive once out of warranty. I got rid of all but two Surfaces with the last year end, I let the staff who used them buy them for $100 if they'd take a Dell latitude. My co-worker has one, has had some issues. I just shrug my shoulders and tell her she can have a nice Dell laptop if she wants.
We go with Dell these days, latitudes always. New ones are 5520s and seem decent. Once in a while something happens, but not often -rarely really, and Unisys sends out a tech the next day and fixes it and off we go.
We tried some Lenovos a few years back, but the body sort of cracked and fell apart on them and we scrapped them. Things are fucking caked in shitty pack in software.
We have piles of older Dell 5450, 5470 and 5480s still running ok, although any with platter drives kinda suck. The SSD ones are still not terrible. Staff will gobble them up for 50 to 100 a piece when we get rid of them. They buy cheap shit and it dies every couple of years and wonder why I dropped 1500 on my wife's laptop that will last 6 or 7 years like the last one. Have fun with another $300 dollar piece of shit that's dead in 18 months, 6 months out of its one year warranty.
We had a pile of decrepit 6420, 6430s that I did the free win 7 to win 10 upgrade on and then gave away to participants. Work enough to be a telehealth device and some web browsing, watch some netflix on.
We had some Asus laptops show up via a program we amalgamated; plastic shit that ran like shit. Goddamn they were terrible. I could not give them away. Literally, the person I gave it away to brought it back. This is why you don't send some knob to Best Buy to buy whatever is on sale that week.
I think Apple had stellar build quality when they were small and no one could afford or cared about them except for the cultists. Now they're more mass produced and they're the same shit as everything but more expensive with little ability to repair and more oddball parts. The owners still have that demented and unearned sense of superiority though.
Apple products don't have any design flaws, you're just holding it wrong.
Now if you'll excuse me I have to go manually suck the dust out of my Macbook's keyboard using my mouth so that it works again.
Apple's M1-etc laptops are remarkable partially because of the custom silicon and partially because they just undid the crazy stuff everyone hated and went back to the old stuff everyone liked/tolerated. Never thought I'd see the day they had a usable keyboard again.
I had a battery start expanding due to constant heat in my last i7 MacBook Pro (yay JavaScript development), but in my current M1 model the fans only even turn on occasionally. The machine runs so much cooler, I have much higher hopes for its extended lifespan.
We have piles of older Dell 5450, 5470 and 5480s still running ok, although any with platter drives kinda suck. The SSD ones are still not terrible. Staff will gobble them up for 50 to 100 a piece when we get rid of them. They buy cheap shit and it dies every couple of years and wonder why I dropped 1500 on my wife's laptop that will last 6 or 7 years like the last one. Have fun with another $300 dollar piece of shit that's dead in 18 months, 6 months out of its one year warranty.
A $300 laptop that lasts 18 months is a better deal than a $1500 laptop that lasts 7 years. A staff member who pays $300 every 18 months is paying $200 per year on laptops, whereas your wife's machine costs you $212 a year if it lasts 7 years, and $250 a year if it lasts 6. Not only that, but the staff member gets an ever-increasing level of technology, whereas your wife's specs are almost entirely locked for seven years.
I generally subscribe to the 'buy once, cry once' mentality, but there are times when churn and burn works out just as good if not better.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
We have piles of older Dell 5450, 5470 and 5480s still running ok, although any with platter drives kinda suck. The SSD ones are still not terrible. Staff will gobble them up for 50 to 100 a piece when we get rid of them. They buy cheap shit and it dies every couple of years and wonder why I dropped 1500 on my wife's laptop that will last 6 or 7 years like the last one. Have fun with another $300 dollar piece of shit that's dead in 18 months, 6 months out of its one year warranty.
A $300 laptop that lasts 18 months is a better deal than a $1500 laptop that lasts 7 years. A staff member who pays $300 every 18 months is paying $200 per year on laptops, whereas your wife's machine costs you $212 a year if it lasts 7 years, and $250 a year if it lasts 6. Not only that, but the staff member gets an ever-increasing level of technology, whereas your wife's specs are almost entirely locked for seven years.
I generally subscribe to the 'buy once, cry once' mentality, but there are times when churn and burn works out just as good if not better.
That $300 laptop is going to have garbage specs and be a terrible experience from the drop. Plus you have to take time to the computer work like the old one every year. There's just no winning there.
The low end laptops I've seen have never been at the vanguard of tech; we're talking shitty HP laptops with 32 GB hard drives or 4GB of RAM etc. I had a staff member with an HP Stream which was a pretty little blue laptop with 32GB for storage; I fought with that motherfucker for a weekend to wrangle Windows 10 updates onto it. Just unreal.
Nosf on
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Maybe unupgradable laptops are the problem
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
We have piles of older Dell 5450, 5470 and 5480s still running ok, although any with platter drives kinda suck. The SSD ones are still not terrible. Staff will gobble them up for 50 to 100 a piece when we get rid of them. They buy cheap shit and it dies every couple of years and wonder why I dropped 1500 on my wife's laptop that will last 6 or 7 years like the last one. Have fun with another $300 dollar piece of shit that's dead in 18 months, 6 months out of its one year warranty.
A $300 laptop that lasts 18 months is a better deal than a $1500 laptop that lasts 7 years. A staff member who pays $300 every 18 months is paying $200 per year on laptops, whereas your wife's machine costs you $212 a year if it lasts 7 years, and $250 a year if it lasts 6. Not only that, but the staff member gets an ever-increasing level of technology, whereas your wife's specs are almost entirely locked for seven years.
I generally subscribe to the 'buy once, cry once' mentality, but there are times when churn and burn works out just as good if not better.
That $300 laptop is going to have garbage specs and be a terrible experience from the drop. Plus you have to take time to the computer work like the old one every year. There's just no winning there.
Really depends on the use case. Not all employees need top-of-the-line machines. Many of them would do fine with Chromebooks, even.
We have a few apps that won't run on Chromebooks, so it's Windows for us. One of our remote sites (long story short) just bought some chromebooks and I'm waiting for the helpdesk ticket to come in saying they can't do a few things on them. Oh well, they can do RDP I suppose.
Hmm. Google drive has once again silently reinstalled itself on my computer. Dated yesterday on the add/remove programs list. How?
It sounds like this is becoming more of a widespread problem, last time it happened I couldn't find any corroborating stories of it happening, now I can. Some people are guessing it's being installed because by Chrome somehow, but uhhh I don't have Chrome installed, I use Firefox.
BahamutZERO on
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
We have piles of older Dell 5450, 5470 and 5480s still running ok, although any with platter drives kinda suck. The SSD ones are still not terrible. Staff will gobble them up for 50 to 100 a piece when we get rid of them. They buy cheap shit and it dies every couple of years and wonder why I dropped 1500 on my wife's laptop that will last 6 or 7 years like the last one. Have fun with another $300 dollar piece of shit that's dead in 18 months, 6 months out of its one year warranty.
A $300 laptop that lasts 18 months is a better deal than a $1500 laptop that lasts 7 years. A staff member who pays $300 every 18 months is paying $200 per year on laptops, whereas your wife's machine costs you $212 a year if it lasts 7 years, and $250 a year if it lasts 6. Not only that, but the staff member gets an ever-increasing level of technology, whereas your wife's specs are almost entirely locked for seven years.
I generally subscribe to the 'buy once, cry once' mentality, but there are times when churn and burn works out just as good if not better.
That $300 laptop is going to have garbage specs and be a terrible experience from the drop. Plus you have to take time to the computer work like the old one every year. There's just no winning there.
Really depends on the use case. Not all employees need top-of-the-line machines. Many of them would do fine with Chromebooks, even.
A $300 Chromebook is a different level than a $300 Windows laptop. The Chromebook would be great for a lot of folks. The laptop is going to be shit. I'm not even talking about the HP Stream devices either, I'm talking about full fledged laptops that take minutes to boot and more than a minute to switch tasks from a browser to a word processor. They're absolute trash, but people expect the world of them.
It's not the old days. You see Pentium or Celeron on a computer now, you run.
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In terms of quality, there's little daylight between the two these days. They both use proprietary motherboards and psu's and they both use dated, aged cases that use 20 year old tooling.
What Dell exceeds at compared to HP is the fucking warranty shenanigans.
Yeah, all the SI's like IBP or Cybepower, Maingear, and what have you all use commercial off-the-shelf parts and you can upgrade them, etc.
The OEM's actively work to make upgrading impossible and create a massive amount of e-waste due to non-reusable parts.
I get that most OEMs are pretty bad, and that they may be better than a lot of those OEMs, but that doesn't make them good. I've seen way too many come in with graphics cards rattling around inside the case (or missing altogether), coolers not attached, missing RAM, incorrect CPUs.. they're just not great.
Yeah nah, I'd take a shipping mishap or a missing stick of RAM that takes a bit to get sorted out over throwing the entire PC out in 3 years because its out of warranty and its proprietary garbage PSU just died.
It really depends. I got a HP Omen 25l during the GPU shortage, when you couldn't buy anything (CPU, GPU or sometimes even memory), even if you were willing to spend 2 or 3 times of the retail price.
This PC got a Intel i7 10700, 16GB DDR4, Geforce RTX 3070, 1TB WD Black SSD, 550W Gold rated PSU from Coolermaster. I certainly could do better nowadays with customized parts, but the HP uses standard ATX parts which are user replaceable. The layout of the PC case is fine, I didn't notice any heat related shenanigans. It even got a nice GPU holder screwed into the front which also fits other brands of GPUs.
The business models of the three big AIO vendors Lenovo, HP, Dell (which come with W10 pro or W11 pro) are clearly defined into workstations and Office-PCs in the B2B space. Most of the Office PCs can't even be preconfigured with GPUs at all (Lenovo, HP).
Customer line (everything with Win 10/11 Home) is really muddy and often resembles a thrift shop of previous B2B models and unsold parts - thats my experience. Its still stupid, because all of the vendors have okayish gaming lines which they cannibalize (Lenovo Legion, HP Omen, Dell - Alien Ware).
Anyways, I often have the feeling that Youtubers pick the the worst prebuild they can find to review it and make a show out of.
Again, I know the big three are kinda crappy. HP has gotten better, though I still wouldn't buy a gaming computer from them. I've just seen these issues just in the store I work out of, and I know our internal forum is full of stories from iBuyPower coming in just jacked.
Unless you’re going boutique like Maingear, things are always risky when a constructed computer is mailed.
You can fix a computer. You can’t fix thousands of tons of ewaste from proprietary hardware.
I think you massively overstate the failure rate of PC's from the big OEM's like Dell and HP. Yes, Dell components will fail, but Dell/HP also makes orders of magnitude more PSU's than a company like Corsair will in a year, so even if they have a similar failure rate, Dell and HP will just have *more* failures.
As for them being proprietary in some cases, yeah they are. But they're also designed to not be overbuilt for the machine. If they determine a specific line of computers needs a 450W PSU, they'll build a 450W PSU for it. It doesn't have extra bits/overhead that it doesn't need, which means less raw materials going into said PSU, which does help reduce e-waste. OEM's like Dell and HP spend more money on engineering than a company like corsair makes in total revenue to build products that sell millions of units every year. The scale they operate is just... different.
remember it is in the interests of the OEM to not make products with high failure rates, even when out of warranty. If your computer dies 1 month out of warranty, you're going to be mad and less likely to buy that brand again. but if you get 6-7 years out of that computer, you're more likely to buy that same brand.
And for every failure, there are tons of people who have no issues whatsoever. My grandmother has a 10 year old acer that I've put an SSD in and otherwise is still going strong. there are a lot more than those than there are failures.
Theres a reason for businesses the OEMS sell warranty packages with onsite support. You sneeze at them the motherboard fails.
Power supplies now have 10 year warranties.
And their 450W PSU is far less power efficient than a 3rd party 450W power supply. They had to be forced by law to comply with the bare minimum 80 Plus standards, and their power draws are all still significantly worse.
Anecdotes. My anecdote is working for 13 years in three different companies that all used Dell was maybe one or two failures per year across staff between 150 and 200 people.
Not saying they don't fail, and i have my issues with all the OEM's for different reasons. but their failure rates are not going to be all that different than industry average. There's just physically *more* of them in the world than prebuilts.
And there are always exceptions to the rules. in 2005-ish the Dell Optiplex GX 270 had a known issue of a bad capacitor that would fail. We had 50 of them at a workplace and I had to get all 50 replaced over the course of about 18 months. It was an acknowledged issue to the point that Dell would replace them for free out of warranty. but the GX 280, the next model in that line, was rock solid, since you know Dell didn't want that to happen again. Don't think we had a single failure on that line.
Prebuilts work on a razor-thin profit margin. I think that's why the build quality often suffers.
In terms of laptop build quality, it is Apple, Lenovo, and everyone else.
Like, the gulf is wide between those two and the rest of the market. Maybe you could put the Surface line in there.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Apparently the new Razer Blades are top notch build quality.
Got tape a newer Surface its a pretty sweet looking machine
I have an older Surface Pro and it's a solid piece of kit.
Still got an old 13" Dell Latitude that was my mum's, bought second-hand ex-business, and that thing also appears to be un-killable.
Steam | XBL
Ehhhh I buy surfaces for work and I've had about 20 (out of about 150) fail in some way (either the keyboard stops working, it goes into a boot loop, or the hard drive fails) in less than 3 years
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
That's far more luck than we've had. Pretty much all the Surfaces we've had were awful. People keep requesting them, suffer with their various issues for awhile, then they come back and request swapping them out with a Dell or Lenovo that actually works. If they're stubborn they'll have us RMA the thing. But so far, we've never had a lifecycle replacement where someone wanted another Surface.
Yes but Razer focuses on thinness so the thing runs as hot as the surface of the sun.
Yeah, Apple has had stupid design flaws for years that they have the bad habit of denying until years later than whoops, yeah it's thing. For this years machine only though according to the repair program, even though the next year uses the same thing etc.
So unless you need Apple for some reason Lenovo.
Winter's coming.
Now if you'll excuse me I have to go manually suck the dust out of my Macbook's keyboard using my mouth so that it works again.
Sucking is better than blowing with keyboards. If you're lucky you'll find a reserve snack in there.
We go with Dell these days, latitudes always. New ones are 5520s and seem decent. Once in a while something happens, but not often -rarely really, and Unisys sends out a tech the next day and fixes it and off we go.
We tried some Lenovos a few years back, but the body sort of cracked and fell apart on them and we scrapped them. Things are fucking caked in shitty pack in software.
We have piles of older Dell 5450, 5470 and 5480s still running ok, although any with platter drives kinda suck. The SSD ones are still not terrible. Staff will gobble them up for 50 to 100 a piece when we get rid of them. They buy cheap shit and it dies every couple of years and wonder why I dropped 1500 on my wife's laptop that will last 6 or 7 years like the last one. Have fun with another $300 dollar piece of shit that's dead in 18 months, 6 months out of its one year warranty.
We had a pile of decrepit 6420, 6430s that I did the free win 7 to win 10 upgrade on and then gave away to participants. Work enough to be a telehealth device and some web browsing, watch some netflix on.
We had some Asus laptops show up via a program we amalgamated; plastic shit that ran like shit. Goddamn they were terrible. I could not give them away. Literally, the person I gave it away to brought it back. This is why you don't send some knob to Best Buy to buy whatever is on sale that week.
I think Apple had stellar build quality when they were small and no one could afford or cared about them except for the cultists. Now they're more mass produced and they're the same shit as everything but more expensive with little ability to repair and more oddball parts. The owners still have that demented and unearned sense of superiority though.
Apple's M1-etc laptops are remarkable partially because of the custom silicon and partially because they just undid the crazy stuff everyone hated and went back to the old stuff everyone liked/tolerated. Never thought I'd see the day they had a usable keyboard again.
I had a battery start expanding due to constant heat in my last i7 MacBook Pro (yay JavaScript development), but in my current M1 model the fans only even turn on occasionally. The machine runs so much cooler, I have much higher hopes for its extended lifespan.
A $300 laptop that lasts 18 months is a better deal than a $1500 laptop that lasts 7 years. A staff member who pays $300 every 18 months is paying $200 per year on laptops, whereas your wife's machine costs you $212 a year if it lasts 7 years, and $250 a year if it lasts 6. Not only that, but the staff member gets an ever-increasing level of technology, whereas your wife's specs are almost entirely locked for seven years.
I generally subscribe to the 'buy once, cry once' mentality, but there are times when churn and burn works out just as good if not better.
That $300 laptop is going to have garbage specs and be a terrible experience from the drop. Plus you have to take time to the computer work like the old one every year. There's just no winning there.
Really depends on the use case. Not all employees need top-of-the-line machines. Many of them would do fine with Chromebooks, even.
It sounds like this is becoming more of a widespread problem, last time it happened I couldn't find any corroborating stories of it happening, now I can. Some people are guessing it's being installed because by Chrome somehow, but uhhh I don't have Chrome installed, I use Firefox.
A $300 Chromebook is a different level than a $300 Windows laptop. The Chromebook would be great for a lot of folks. The laptop is going to be shit. I'm not even talking about the HP Stream devices either, I'm talking about full fledged laptops that take minutes to boot and more than a minute to switch tasks from a browser to a word processor. They're absolute trash, but people expect the world of them.
It's not the old days. You see Pentium or Celeron on a computer now, you run.