Moving away from Dell. Lenovo?

[Jamman960]

Can't say I've been impressed with Lenovo so far, it took weeks to get them out to repair a chromebook with a 3yr NBD onsite warrantee and when they did come out the engineer bodged the install so badly that the screen fell out before we gave it back to the pupil.

 

On another occasion they've refused to look at a chromebook thats overheating stating it was within normal range despite it getting hot enough to erase the text on the asset label and cause random reboots.

[MatthewL]

I do consider HP kit but I find it expensive (based on eBuyer) when buying odd machines, never had an issue thought with Dell kit but never used it en mass.

 

Dell Latitude and Optiplex have served us well, the Lenovo ThinkPad I think they are there is technically nothing wrong just don't think its the right fit for what we use but we do have several thousand laptops out there since Covid. Engineers complain that there is lots of bits they cannot swap as its all Lenovo where as Dell would send parts out, the finish on Lenovos I don't like, marks very easy and you get that greasy print all over them.

 

I suppose support may vary in different part of the country but we do see engineers several times a week purely down to the number of devices we have, cannot fault engineers from the little experience I have with them.

[DrBeaker]

Dell > HP > Lenovo

 

In that order.

 

Dell

 

Dell support when under warranty is pretty good, even out of warranty repairs/service are good. Build quality is solid. Only recently did I have an argument with a couple of Dell reps about an issue with an in-warranty device support request.

 

 

HP

 

Never yet had a HP device fail but build quality is solid.

 

 

Lenovo

 

Lenovo > Loads of new laptops. ALL.... with a spelling mistake in the BIOS settings. Didn't fill me full of confidence about their build quality.

 

Wireless connection issues, LCD brightness - never had issues like this with Dell or HP kit.

 

 

Build quality is OK but support seems very basic.

 

 

 

Add up your intangible time spent dealing with a crappy end/vendor support that management never understand.... TAKES TIME... and spend it on better equipment from day 1.

[Squelch]

We are mostly HP and mostly happy. Take advantage of their cashback to get decent pricing.

[MrEprise]

Lenovo > Loads of new laptops. ALL.... with a spelling mistake in the BIOS settings. Didn't fill me full of confidence about their build quality.

 

I spotted something during the POST while setting up one of the 100e 2nd-gen laptops we got during the pandemic, something of which didn't inspire confidence in their ability to do things legally.

 

I'll attach a picture and see if anyone spots what I saw.

 

[FN-GM]

After reading through this thread, I do have to ask if anyone is using HP anymore? They used to be one of the top three, but in recent years there has been a decided lack of talk about them as a laptop (and desktop) provider on here I feel.

 

Our last place had HP Elitebooks. They were fine, but they seemed to wear quicker than the older Dells did. I was issued one and I looked after it, not a scratch, but the keys and palm rest have worn quite a bit.

Edited June 9, 2024 by FN-GM

[MartinT]

We're a Lenovo school and I have found them to be very good, hardy and reliable over time. The key thing to remember is that only ThinkPads and ThinkCentres should be purchased, not their cheaper domestic grade products. ThinkPad laptops are the real deal.

 

The one year we bought Acers (because our shipment got stuck on that Evergreen ship in the Suez canal), we sorely regretted it. Almost every one of them has now failed.

[PotNoodleTech]

We're a Lenovo school and I have found them to be very good, hardy and reliable over time. The key thing to remember is that only ThinkPads and ThinkCentres should be purchased, not their cheaper domestic grade products. ThinkPad laptops are the real deal.

 

The one year we bought Acers (because our shipment got stuck on that Evergreen ship in the Suez canal), we sorely regretted it. Almost every one of them has now failed.

 

Yes Acer are total garbage. We've had approx 90% faliure rate on acer chromebooks in 3 years.

[DrCheese]

Weird, I always tend to stick to Dell if I can as their kit & support have always been rock solid for us.

 

HP - We have a bunch of their prodesk computers as I've always found them ok & they used to be cheaper than Dell (Esp after trade in) - Don't find that's the case anymore tho.

Their laptops are complete garbage tho and I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. They deliberately make them difficult to repair.

 

Lenovo - I rate Lenovo laptops, lovely solid pieces of kit. Same with the desktops really. The only thing I find annoying is if you want something custom it's a pain (eg With dell if I wanted 16gb in a machine it was straight forward - Lenovo it's all set models)

 

What does everyone think about other third parties, eg Very PC/XMA/Ebuyer? - I've had mixed experiences so I tend to stick to Tier 1 vendors now (those above..) but of course, the others tend to come out cheaper..

[synaesthesia]

 

What does everyone think about other third parties, eg Very PC/XMA/Ebuyer? - I've had mixed experiences so I tend to stick to Tier 1 vendors now (those above..) but of course, the others tend to come out cheaper..

 

Very are high on our list for desktop suppliers. Important to note that their hardware/chassis is all whitebox - for example the Flex you'll also find with Zoostorm badges on, but big differences are the quality of whats inside (Zoostorm will be cheese grade chinesium with weapons grade power supplies) and of course the support/aftersales, and I don't think VeryPC are easy to beat for that!

[Norphy]

What does everyone think about other third parties, eg Very PC/XMA/Ebuyer? - I've had mixed experiences so I tend to stick to Tier 1 vendors now (those above..) but of course, the others tend to come out cheaper..

 

I can only speak for Stone and even then the experience for that is close to ten years ago, so make of that what you will. That said, back then they were very good and I'm sure they probably still are. Decent quality cases and PSUs, branded motherboards and RAM (MSI when I last looked) and very good support; onsite techs that knew what they were doing and were usually there the next day. I'd look hard at them alongside VeryPC. For laptops, they used Clevo as an ODM (and they most likely still do). Their laptops are OK, nothing special but are mostly robust enough.

 

The disadvantage of them over the likes of Dell comes back to what I was talking about with driver/BIOS support. With Dell and other Tier 1s, you get driver packs from one source which are regularly updated by the OEM and you often get management packages which integrate into your endpoint management systems to automatically update the drivers and BIOS/firmware on the computers. Stone didn't have that back then so driver management was a bit more awkward as I had to pull drivers from multiple sources. They either weren't too good at keeping their own repositories up to date, or they plain didn't supply drivers, I forget which.

 

The other (possible) advantage of Tier 1s is that they can customise the hardware a bit more, in terms of cases etc. Dell, Lenovo and HP all offer "Micro" form factor PCs, which are very very small whereas the smallest that Stone seem to offer is based around a Mini-ITX form factor case which is small but not quite as small.

Edited June 10, 2024 by Norphy

[DrCheese]

The disadvantage of them over the likes of Dell comes back to what I was talking about with driver/BIOS support. With Dell and other Tier 1s, you get driver packs from one source which are regularly updated by the OEM and you often get management packages which integrate into your endpoint management systems to automatically update the drivers and BIOS/firmware on the computers..

 

Yeah, this is a big advantage for us - Just a simple download & the hardware is supported for years. Even when Dell drops support you can find spare parts on eBay easily. They are also built like brick outhouses & can withstand student abuse for years whilst still looking fresh.

 

With custom stuff, we had a vendor's machines with a USB fault whereby a USB socket would die randomly. This could be fixed by a few reboots or by replugging the device, but ultimately we had to get all the motherboards swapped out which took just under a year of going back/forth with them before they finally agreed to swap over. Whereas Dell would have just.. done it - Or as they control the entire stack wouldn't have happened in the first place.

 

We also had the same motherboards in another vendor's case, which we had to replace at our cost.

 

Have also had issues with custom vendors putting the same MAC address on a bunch of boards (When they've put their own custom bios's on) which.. caused headaches or not tagging WMI properly so all their hardware just appears as "SYSTEM NAME TYPE"

 

So hit/miss really - They're often tempting because they come in much cheaper but I feel the TCO longterm isn't always worth it.

Edited June 10, 2024 by DrCheese

[MartinT]

Lenovo has the Vantage app, which puts all the update drivers for all models into one place.

 

Why other vendors haven't copied this after so many years is a mystery to me.

[Norphy]

Dell have the Command suite, one component of which does this.