William, I did not know that HP had a quality problem. I regularly tell people I hate Hewlett Packard printers. The printer paper must pass over a roller at the back, which seems to be quite a bend in the paper. This works fine with paper, but it is not reliable at printing heavier material like business card stock or photo paper. Otherwise, my HP6940 works fine. On Fri, 10 Nov 2017 23:58:11 -0500 William Park via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

I've been asked by few people about which desktop to buy. They are technical enough to swap components, but definitely don't have time to troubleshoot. They have more important things to do. So, I said any brand, new or refurbished, except HP.

Things may have changed, and HP may be good now. Which brand would you recommend for desktop computer for business people? -- William Park <opengeometry@yahoo.ca> --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

-- Howard Gibson hgibson@eol.ca jhowardgibson@gmail.com http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson

On Fri, 10 Nov 2017 23:58:11 -0500 William Park via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

I've been asked by few people about which desktop to buy. They are technical enough to swap components, but definitely don't have time to troubleshoot. They have more important things to do. So, I said any brand, new or refurbished, except HP.

Things may have changed, and HP may be good now. Which brand would you recommend for desktop computer for business people?

For Linux, I would strongly recommend HP only :) Not only, and in general, are HP's high and solid state quality, but very reliable, supports Linux, and very well suited to business end users my 2c Andre

| From: William Park via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | I've been asked by few people about which desktop to buy. They are | technical enough to swap components, but definitely don't have time to | troubleshoot. They have more important things to do. So, I said any | brand, new or refurbished, except HP. | | Things may have changed, and HP may be good now. Which brand would you | recommend for desktop computer for business people? It depends. For real business people, willing to spend a bit more, most manufacturers have a business (as opposed to consumer) line of computers. Or even lines. Brand names include: Lenovo Think*, Dell OptiPlex or Precision, HP something-or-other (Z? EliteDesk? they keep changing names), Acert Veriton. What follows are some hints of inexpensive not-new boxes. If you do care about price, you can get an off-lease business computer from a variety of places. But then you need to know what you are missing by having an old machine. My general rule is: Haswell and later processors are pretty safe. Those processors have 4 digit models that start with 4. Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge (2 and 3) use more electricity and probably don't come with USB 3 but are still useful. I have recently bought off-lease computers from refurb.io (look for sales) and Dell Financial Services (look for sales). For some reason, Haswell isn't showing up often. I suspect that since progress in processors has slowed down, companies are holding onto their computers longer. There is a second kind of discounted machines: open-box or refurbs. Actually "refurbished" is pretty confusing: sometimes it means computers returned by purchasers and checked over by a refurbisher; sometimes it means off-lease and checked over by a refurbisher. (The refurbisher might be the manufacturer or it might be a different company; it makes a difference.) I used to buy refurbs of the almost-new variety from Staples. They didn't always have them and they didn't always sell them at a good price. They moved that business to ebay. That's where my main desktop came from. <http://stores.ebay.ca/Staples-Canada> No desktops at the moment. Or laptops. Maybe they aren't doing this any longer. Dell Financial Services: <https://www.dellrefurbished.ca/> Deal ending today (but there will be more for Black Friday): <http://forums.redflagdeals.com/dellrefurbishedca-dell-refurbished-weekend-sale-40-desktops-30-laptops-20-monitors-until-nov-12-2141322/> Refurb.io's ebay store. 10% off with coupon PERFORM until Nov. 14: <https://www.ebay.ca/rpp/refurbio-coupon-1109/refurbio> This is a pretty good deal on an older business-class computer with monitor, keyboard and mouse (the keyboard and mouse I got from refurb.io a couple of months ago were horrible). This is a Sandy Bridge processor, an i5 2400 -- a decent older processor. This computer is also a business desktop but it has a Haswell processor. <https://www.ebay.ca/itm/HP-Elite-800G1-Tower-i5-4570-3-2ghz-8GB-Ram-500GB-HDD-Windows-10-Pro/122714693672> These have hard disks. For most purposes I'd install an SSD. Modern desktops (Windows and Linux) perform a lot better when running off SSDs. Only the system itself, not your files, need to be on the SSD. So a small one is OK. But 256G (bigger than necessary) is a sweet spot. RAM matters. I think that 2G is OK, not great. More is always better. This is more or less what I bought a couple of months ago. I paid less and mine probably had smaller resources. Note that these SFF computers have proprietary power supplies which are expensive to replace. <http://www.ebay.ca/itm/HP-Elite-8300-SFF-Desktop-i5-3470-3-2ghz-8GB-500GB-HDD-Windows-10-pro/122078090918> NMicroVIP is a pretty good source for almost-new Asus stuff. They have weekly deals. Only some of their prices are good. <http://www.nmicrovip.ca/> Not many desktops at the moment. There's lots of stuff on Kijiji. I would not want to explain how I figure out which offers are trustable. But I've had very good luck (touch wood).