OT:Dell computers

[Bill Campbell]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010, Fairlight wrote:
>This public service announcement was brought to you by Ken Cole:
>> We at GE use only Dell desktop/notebook computers, several 100,000 of
>> them world wide and we have very little problem with them.
>> 
>> We do though stay to just two models, one desktop and one notebook.
>
>Several of my clients get Dell servers.  The PERC RAID controllers like to
>die, unfortunately.  Of all the things you don't want to see die, that's
>pretty much the top of the list.  And yet, it's the most common fault point
>I've seen.  We've had integrated NICs just up and die as well.  Their rack
>servers are -mostly- okay, but not without fault.

I don't have any clients running Dells so have never seen
problems with them.

All the new servers we're installing are Supermicro boxes from
Silicon Mechanics, an integrator that's about 20 miles from us.
They use only 3Ware RAID controllers.  The support we get from
3Ware has been amazingly good, even on old hardware.

Silicon Mechanics and 3Ware both have excellent Linux knowledge
and support so their hardware always works fine on our systems.

The vast majority of our desktop and laptop machines are Macs, so
I can't say much about non-Apple hardware for those.  FWIW, at
events with lots of developers like a Python day at the
University of Washington, and Plone bootcamps, at lest 75% of the
laptops are Macs (and at the last Plone bootcamp I attended,
there were two non-Macs, one running Windows, and the
instructor's which was running Linux).

BTW:  I have no relationship with, Silicon Mechanics, Supermicro,
3Ware, or Apple other than as a satisfied customer (we generally
have our clients buy their hardware direct as we got out of the
hardware business years ago).

...

Bill
-- 
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