After digesting all of the helpful reader suggestions in a recent posting about a compact PC, I decided to forge ahead and buy an HP and an extended warranty for when the heat build-up causes it to fail. The HP site offers “50% off 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 graphic card upgrade ($65 savings)”. I tried to configure a machine with that graphics card, but it wasn’t available (so you get 50% off a card that you can’t buy). I tried the Live Assistance button and was helpfully connected to “Irene G”. The form to request Live Assistance asks for one’s name, email address, and question. One of Irene’s first questions back to me was for my name, email address, and phone number. She needed this for “security and verification purposes”. I had used “Philip Greenspun” in the initial form, but experimented wth “Barack Obama, 202-456-1111, and president@whitehouse.gov”. Irene had no trouble verifying that I was indeed Barack Obama and helpfully answered that the GT 220 graphics card was out of stock. I called the phone number that HP lists for PC sales and punched a few buttons through the phone tree after which the automated system disconnected me.
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I’m a Mac man myself—I grew out of building my own machines a long time ago—but I’ll avoid commenting on the pros and cons of what PC hardware you could get for your money instead. I will, however, contribute the following link, which I think speaks volumes about how companies like HP fail to sell their computers:
http://mrgan.tumblr.com/post/867437854/fish-in-a-barrel
Thanks, Stef. It does seem odd that Dell and HP’s consumer-facing sites are best set up to sell computers to Intel employees who know the difference between a Core i7-960 Bloomfield and a Core 2 Duo Kentsfield.
A Macintosh is not an option since none of the household members have any experience with Mac OS and only one has experience with Unix. Everyone already knows how to use Windows.
I am amazed that Dell and HP stay in business because I too, cannot figure out how to order their products, and like you I’m an engineer. As I see it, I think you have 3 choices:
A) Buy an Apple and run windows on it. This way the GUI/CLI is familiar to all household members
B) Build your own mini-ITX with an i5 inside.
C) make up a requirements document, hire a kid (somebody’s nephew) to draw up a spec, approve it, have him build it up, install windows on it, burn it it, and then pay him for 6 months of support (in case it overheats, etc). Might be a nice project for a middle school/high school student.
-jay
I suppose that I should put in a kind word for Microsoft here. The old computer, which ran Windows Vista, required the following sysadmin during its 1.25-year lifetime: setting up four user accounts so that each person could have his or her own bookmarks, etc. (10 minutes); setting up automated nightly backups to a network attached storage box (10 minutes); installing desired additional applications such as Google Chrome (1 hour?); responding to various Java and Adobe upgrade requests (20 minutes?). Although no anti-virus software was installed and the computer was used by roughly 20 different people, many of whom were completely naive, the machine never became infected (as far as I know!).
So, long time reader and all. Have to point out what strikes me as a stunning inconsistency here. Your writings are often epic tales of a guy trying to use technology and getting befuddled by the inept design/product decisions of companies who clearly aren’t taking users into account. Hell, it is a running theme in your work going back to your battle with the giant CD carousel and extending to how you write about our inept and stupidly designed government today.
I am by no means an Apple zealot. I run OS X for most everything, except for a couple of big workstation class ThinkPads I keep around for running SolidWorks. Here you are however, someone frustrated with technology stupidly, writing off THE company that makes billions of dollars every flipping quarter because they do a very good job of cutting through all the stupidity… especially compared to companies like Dell and HP. Ever picked up a new MacBook Pro? Clearly, it was an object designed by people who gave a damn about the thing.
HP, on the other hand, is a company running on flywheel momentum and printer ink sales. They haven’t done anything exciting or innovative or interesting in over a decade. I’m not calling them dumb or anything, it is just clear to me that this isn’t a company that really cares anymore – everything for HP is just sort of “That’ll do…” The last HP laptop I picked up had the structural rigidity of a paper plate at a Texas BBQ and the painted plastic surfaces were simply awful. The whole thing was gaudy and over designed stuffed full of crap that I could just tell wouldn’t last 3 months of use.
Phil – you seriously need a MacBook Pro. Boot Camp it into Windows if you must. Barring that, buy yourself a ThinkPad. If – god forbid – you do buy the Windows machine, wipe it clean of the factory junk and give it a fresh install of Windows – a good reason why Macs in Boot Camp run Windows better than Windows machines is because they only get Microsoft instances of Win and not the OEM infected version.
Greg: What exactly would a MacBook Pro have bought me in the current situation? Other than having to provide support to the 20-or-so folks who sat down to use it and would have had no clue how to bring up a browser on a Macintosh? Remember that this shopping excursion was motivated by a household member pouring a full mug of tea into a $499 Toshiba laptop, which ran Windows Vista flawlessly until it was flooded. It looks as though the cheapest MacBook Pro is $1299, which is $1380 with Massachusetts sales tax (a Windows laptop, by contrast, can be shipped in from Amazon without tax being collected (though I suppose use tax is still owed)). If I value my time at $50/hour and assume that each of 20 users would have required an average of one hour of training, the Macintosh would have cost $2480 for 1.5 years rather than $499.
ibuypower has some good high end desktop configurations.
I’m unsure if the horiz case/size requirement may cause an issue.
Greg: I’ve never owned an Apple product that didn’t do its best to make an AppleCare extended warranty a necessity. My most recent MacBook Pro has had its battery replaced after the original battery developed a distressing quarter-inch bulge (put it on the tabletop, you could rock the machine back and forth on its new hump), has had its logic board replaced after an Apple software update bricked the machine, and has had both its hard drive and DVD-ROM drive replaced.
I can replace any of those parts myself, but instead of calling an 800 number to have replacements sent to my home next-day (as has happened for a Thinkpad under a support contract), I have to make an appointment to drive to the Apple Store. During my most recent journey (to replace the DVD drive), the ‘Genius’ canceled my appointment because I was ten minutes late, so I got to cool my heels for an extra forty-five minutes before seeing a Genius who verified that, yup, the DVD drive was broken, and took away my laptop for a week so that they could do what should be, at best, a half-hour backroom parts swap.
Contrast this experience to my wife’s HP laptop of similar vintage, which was purchased at Costco for $800 and has never had any problems. Or the Toshiba laptop which we used for six years before handing it down to my brother. Or the Thinkpad that was in my trunk during a car crash and broke into two pieces — but still worked after I plugged in an external monitor and keyboard!
Anytime I hear someone talk about Apple quality, I just think “well, you’ve been lucky so far.”