[OPLINTECH] Consumer vs. Commercial grade laptops

Tue May 5 14:12:37 EDT 2015

<RAMBLING>

>From my own experience, that's a mixed bag.

On the one hand, it's become obvious to my over the years that, in general,
lower consumer grade computers usually...well...suck. Especially in the
more recent years, they're pretty much a commodity item expected to have a
1-2 year useful lifespan, if that. When you dive into the guts, especially
on desktop computers, you find that the computers are cheaper for a reason.
Cheap motherboards, cheap/slow RAM, low-quality hard drives, lesser CPUs,
etc. Definitely lower performing over-all. Naturally, the lesser parts are
cheaper to buy so the prices are cheaper and profit margins are maximized.
Just economics.

On the other hand, the business lines are generally made from better
components and expected to have longer useful lifespans...hence the bigger
price. Again, economics.

On the other other hand, just because it's cheaper and made with parts that
are more at risk of failure sooner doesn't mean they actually WILL fail. If
the performance is exactly what you want for the now and the desired
lifetime of your computer/laptop, then maybe it's a good trade-off.
Conversely, just because there are high-quality components doesn't mean
you're not going to get a run of bad luck. You might spend a little extra
for a commercial line of product just to find that they're failing in a
year and a half. It stinks, but it does happen on occasion. (But failure
definitely doesn't occur as often in the business lines as in consumer
lines, in my own experience.)

What I've learned is that it generally seems to save money in the long term
if you put a little extra money in up front for a better performing,
hopefully longer-lasting
computer/laptop/server/wrench/widget/yo-yo/whatever.

You're going to spend a fair lot of time configuring them initially. Very
likely slightly longer than you would with the better laptops, actually,
because the better ones would likely be faster. ...Which will become more
and more apparent as time marches on and you continue to invest time in
them with updates and maintenance.

For simplicity, let's say the cheaper laptops end up outliving their one
year warranty and have a useful lifespan of two years. Around then people
are noticing that they're really slow and start to not use them any more.
So you soon decide to start the process over and get new laptops...and
spend all the money and initial time again to configure them, etc.

The commercial line might be more expensive up front, but you elongate the
cycle, often greatly. Over years, you end up saving a fair bit of money and
a whole lot of time. The time factor is especially notable for my own
clients because they're usually paying ME to configure the computers in
addition to buying them, so there is a very direct relationship between the
time and money. If a library employee is doing the configuring, though,
that can be abstracted a little bit and rolled into "less time to do other
things". It's still a notable cost to the library if someone cares to look,
but it's obscured more and so easier to dismiss.

Having worked with smaller libraries with no IT staff for a very long time,
I definitely recommend spending a little more up front for better equipment
to increase the projected lifespan of the computers. They very easily save
thousands of dollars over the extra years of service and lower maintenance
costs they get from the equipment.

Two cents. I like to take the long-term view of things.

(And yes, it's been pointed out to me before that it's a little
counter-productive for me! I should be recommending shorter-lifespan
devices to maximize my service dollars...where I make my real profits!
 Oops. My bad.  LOL!)

HTH,
Chad

Ps.  One of the easiest things you can do to hugely increase the useful
lifespan of your laptop/computer is to go with SSD drives in lieu of the
hard drive. If you size the SSD realistically and not try to blindly match
the 500GB or 1TB 5,400RPM drive the manufacture puts in, you can keep the
cost the same or similar but increase the performance by orders of
magnitude! That's a key component in changing a 4-year computer to a 6-year
computer for no or almost no extra cost. Especially on an average desktop
patron computer, do you really need a 500GB spinning hard drive when a
180GB SSD gives more than plenty adequate storage capacity.

PPs. Many/most laptops get pretty hot. There just isn't a lot of room in
them for effective heat dissipation. Modern mobile CPUs have helped a lot,
though, as have SSDs. The processor and the (traditional spinning) hard
drive are probably the biggest heat sources. So an SSD will help keep it
cool, as might a latest-generation mobile processor.

PPPs.  For what it's worth, when my custom "whitebox" ASUS laptop died I
think maybe four or five years ago, I ran out to MicroCenter because I
needed a replacement immediately and could afford to wait. I needed a
powerful laptop and simply asked the nearest salesman to show me his top
three laptops with the fastest CPU, largest display, most RAM capacity, and
biggest hard drive (pretty much in that order). I'd consider the Toshiba
Qosmio gaming laptop I ended up with to be more a pro-sumer device than a
consumer or business device, so somewhere between. But at maybe five years
later, it's still my daily driver and easily runs rings around many of the
newest consumer-grade laptops. No reason to replace it. Thinking about
putting a bigger capacity SSD in it some day, but that's about it.

</RAMBLING>

______________________________
*Chad Neeper*
Senior Systems Engineer

*Level 9 Networks*
740-548-8070 (voice)
866-214-6607 (fax)

*Full IT/Computer consulting services -- Specialized in libraries and
schools*

On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 12:45 PM, Fred Miller Jr <
fmiller at auglaizelibraries.org> wrote:

>  We’re getting ready to order some admin staff laptops and was wondering
> everyone’s opinion on comsumer vs. commercial grade laptops. I’m not a big
> fan of HP laptops since they do seem to get hot/warm after leaving running
> for extended period of time. I do like ASUS laptops, but they don’t have
> very many commercial grade laptops. Is the business commercial grade
> laptops worth the extra money to get them for a small library system?
> Comments and thoughts much appreciated.
>
>
>
> Thanks again,
>
>
>
> *Fred Miller Jr*
>
> IT Service Manager
>
> Auglaize County Public District Library System
>
> p: 419-738-2921 ext. 1011
>
> f:  419-738-5168
>
> w: www.auglaizelibraries.org
>
>
>
> *Visit our Library Website! <http://auglaize.oplin.org/>*
>
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