Re: [tlug] Who do you recommend for Business Desktop?

[Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com>]

On Sun, Feb 29, 2004 at 05:48:29PM +0100, Godwin Stewart wrote:

>Precisely - which is why I've always advised *against* all-in-one stuff.

I usually do too, except in certain specific cases.  For a business with
a bunch of workstations, the money you save that way still puts you
money ahead even if one or two of the motherboards out a couple
dozen suffer premature deaths. The thing most likely to kill a mobo
is the person who installs it, anyway, not a failing chip :-)

>> Also, all-in-ones generally come with graphics chips of a fairly 
>> modest spec.  They might not even have a fan.

>Even more reasons to avoid them!

For business use?  Come on!  On a business PC, a graphics chipset
that's cool enough to not need a fan is a real asset.  You show me a
person who puts a Radeon 9800 in a business PC and I'll show you a machine
on which somebody wasted a boatload of money.  Like I said somewhere
back in this thread, even an old card like a TNT2 is more than
adequate for business computing.  Heck, an old Matrox G200, if you
can find one, is more than enough and has the sharpest, clearest 
text and 2D around (although I'll admit my Radeon 9000 is close enough
that the difference doesn't matter).  

Remember: things that go around will someday stop going around.
The fewer of these things your computer needs, the quieter, more
reliable, and cheaper to build and operate it is going to be.  Fans
are things that go around, so try not to have any that are unnecessary.
They cost money, make noise, and break.  A Radeon card like the one
I have in the machine on which I am typing this is far more likely
to fail than a chip low-spec enough that it doesn't need a fan.

So, why do I have a Radeon?  Well, I like their 2D better than Nvidia,
and a Matrox G550 (which I'd rather have) just cost a whole lot
more than this whitebox Radeon did.  I think the Matrox has better
2D, but the Radeon was about 40% cheaper and I was on a tight budget.
And I'll probably be running this Radeon and this Athlon 2200+ for 
years to come, unless something breaks. I'm not going to be out chasing
the latest high-perf video card, etc.  I can see an upgrade to faster
disks somewhere way down the road, but for now this pair of 60 GB
ATAs in RAID 1 configuration are more than fast enough and more than
empty enough.  You'd be surprised just how much performance you *don't*
need in a computer that is neither a game machine nor a development
workstation.

Plus, if you have old, slow, low-spec graphics in all your business
workstations, your employees are a lot less likely to play games on
them for the simple reason that they can't, at least not in such a
way that they'd have fun.  Not enough graphics horsepower for that.
More productivity :-)

There are, of course, people who need fast, multi-CPU machines with
killer graphics cards and multiheaded operation to do their jobs, but
those are not general office workers.  They are engineers, graphic
designers, animators, stock brokers (the multiheaded thing; the
speed itself probably doesn't matter that much; I once got to 
see the traders' desks at an investment bank and quite a few
had multiheaded systems on their desks), etc.

I have nothing against game playing on one's own time on company hardware
if the rules allow it, but I have never been of the opinion that the
company is under any obligation to provide me with suitable hardware
to play the latest FPS.  All they are under an obligation to do is
provide me with hardware that allows me to do my job.  A PIII-1000
with a G200 or TNT2 would be more than enough for that, as long as it
had at least 512 meg of memory (I use a lot, believe me, but it's
not CPU-intensive).  The PIV-2400 Dell that's on my desk can probably
go five years or more and still be fast enough and then some.  Heck,
I do a lot of my work on a Thinkpad with a PIII-500 and Debian Sid.

Jonathan
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