[Discuss] new CSC labs

[Nav Jagpal]

I wasn't a big fan of Dell when we were suffering from > 100% failure
rate with the GX270s. More than 100%? Systems that had been repaired
also failed.

Dell upgraded our > 200 GX270s to GX280s as a warranty claim. That
made me a little happier.

I've been running a small lab (~40 workstations) of GX280s at UVic for
approx. two years, and I really like the machines now. As previously
mentioned, they are SUPER quiet. I walk into a room of over 20
computers and it seems quieter than my single AMD XP 1900+ machine at
home.

Dell provides some good tools for remote management as well. I am able
to upgrade the BIOS and modify BIOS changes without having to visit
individual computers.

Some of the new Dell models are even more friendly to managed
environments. I believe they have three separate models which can all
be cloned using the same image - having a mixed environment of PCs,
but having to maintain only one image is a big time saver.


> Paul Nienaber wrote:
> > David Bronaugh wrote:
> >> Dell though. Ugh. I'm not impressed by pretty much anything about Dell.
> >
> > The motivation seems to be avoiding:
> >
> > a) the garbage that Discovery sold them (and no, this isn't libel, I can
> > back that one up), which they figure any other local computer store
> > represents a risk of (and they're probably right -- it's hard to keep
> > competent people around and turn a profit).
> > b) fly-by-night VARs over in Richmond, etc -- e.g. Tandex, who appear to
> > have gone out of business and taken their warranties with them.  Of
> > course, I would find it terribly funny if Dell did the same thing.
>
> I had a conversation with one of the SENG techs when they were putting the new
> Dell machines in the SENG labs and they basically said the same thing that the
> machines they got from Discovery were crap, and they decided to go with Dell
> more for support reasons than anything else.
>
> One other thing that they really like about the Dells (and I have to agree with
> them on this) is that they are *QUIET*.  After playing around in the SENG labs I
> wanted one for home to replace my P4 3GHz machine with it's noisy fan. =8-p
> ---
> Adam Parkin
> pzelnip at telus.net
> -------------------------------
>