At work I have been asked to price up a new set of desktops for the computer suite we currently have HP Pro 3015Mts http://www.officemagic.co.uk/produc...i-lan-windows-7-pro-xp-pro-geforce-9100-.html and i have been looking at these http://www.misco.co.uk/product/190816/Zoostorm-Pentium-Dual-Core-G840-Tower-PC-No-O-S I know the Zoostorms have more ram but a smaller drive, but our basic install is only 40 - 50 GB so drive size isn't a problem My question is (mostly) which is the better CPU, I've tried googleing it but am getting more and more confused, one site says AMD the next says Intel Any advice would help Thanks
The AMD one is better technically as your not overclocking 3 cores beats 2 on that artitechure More ram is useful but better CPU usually cancels out more ram
When they break how quick can you get an engineer on site to replace the part? what is their RMA like?
As I'm the Tech here we don't usually cal an engineer out. Usually the only faults we have had are HDDs or PSUs going down and I keep a few of them as spares. Thanks for the advice, looks like I'm back to looking for some new machines
You have to think about what applications are going to be used and how they can take advantage of the hardware. For instance If an application can multithread then it's possible that the triple core AMD would be slightly faster. If it can't then the much more advanced architecture of the G840 would be much faster. Many multithreaded applications can only make use of 2 cores, the G840 (based on sandy bridge architecture) would be quite a bit faster than any Athlon or Phenom at the same clock rate.
Should have said theres nothing really hitting the CPU Mostly Word, Internet, some publisher and eduacational stuff
Either one will probably do but the G840 would probably be the better option as I doubt anything would make use of the third core.
As a computer science teacher my experience is both RAM as well as good CPU speed are needed. You did not mention, what kind education you would be providing via those computers. If you are gonna teach just basics of computers science, you should spend more money on lab attendants who could help children while they are practicing.
if your looking at computer suites for schools, consider hp's machines with multipoint server, overall cost less than individual machines linky microsoft linky
Dell machines?? Get all the machines the same make one and ghost the rest with the image. I miss working in the schools :0(
I would say a well known named brand tends to be better in terms of support/warranty. Regardless of whether you swap the parts yourself. Yep - best way to go. I've used Ghost and some open source equivalents as well as Microsofts Windows Deployment Services (WDS) which is pretty decent. Multipoint looks very interesting - quite a few people I know in differnt orgs will be interested in this.
I was at a conference on multipoint and It was basically marketed at schools and small businesses Throw up a few thin clients and a Multipoint server, and give the teachers full access to the control pannel (it has useful features such as view sessions, block them, share one screen across) and easy working machines which the students can't break as easy
i provided and internet cafe experience with my demonstration machine, at an event in the middle of a field last year, and worked well, was a single machine running 2 workstations on a generator
Many thanks for the comments few answers Dan A. we're a special needs school so its mostly the basics and we have a lot of support already. We already use Windows deployment - when we update the suite (only 10 machines) I then have to decide whats now too old and do some swapping round in the class rooms Currnetly the main problem I'm having is cost, I have a £240 limit per machine, fortunatly I don't need Windows etc as we get it through the LEA
Might be worth talking to these guys: http://hardwarespares.com/ They deal with Dell spares and refurbished machines. We've done a lot of business with them recently to repair some of our machines and replace our oldest. Very good prices for kit that should be well up to the task you want. Brilliant service as well. 1 year warranty included on their complete machines, they'll have the parts when they're out of warranty and they'll be cheap. We found them at this years BETT and they've saved us a ton in repair/service costs. Edit: Ignore that it says they don't have any complete units in stock, call them.
