PC systems

[ict-direct]

You may have seen the offers ICT Direct have for pc systems, notably the £99 - 1.6GHz Compaq D500 with 15" TFT or the £249 - 2.8GHz HP Dc7100 with 17" TFT - View the Schools Packages from ICT Direct

Given the size of your ICT budget in 2007, how do you see the type of system you will purchase for your school in the months ahead?

[callumtuckey]

@ict-direct
i find many of your pc systems are reliable and good priced.

[localzuk]

I will only be buying Core 2 Duo machines now, to ensure they last the minimum of 3 years and have just ordered the remaining years PC's (70 Viglen Omnino's at around double that price, but as they are all inone and have 1GB ram they are a good deal).

Admin machines are specced to be as high spec possible whilst not being completely stupid price (so £500 each + monitor) - so then they will survive at least 3 years of SIMS eating memory, hopefully up to 5.

[Elky]

We've found that a lot of customers are confused over the CPU options. Just recently I've had 2 customers who thought that a competitor offering an Intel Pentium 631 3.0GHz CPU is a better deal than the Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 just because they have seen 3.0GHz against 1.86GHz (even though it's dual core) on the quotes.

[PeterW]

Agreed Intel still have some educational work to do here.

[john]

I will be buying Dual Core machines, either Intel or AMD dependant on cost, but probably the Intel ones.

[richard]

My junior school will not be buying anything for a while as all their kit is 18 months old or less. However the secondary school I work at has just brought a load of Celeron D machines.

[localzuk]

Celerons? They're gonna crawl in a year or so...

We have some Sempron machines which are starting to creak and they're only 12 months old.

[richard]

We've got Celerons at my junior school but have not had any real problems with those yet. Though they are not really put under any great strain.