IT Managers, what hardware support company do you use?

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Rose Chap

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I need a company to support the IT hardware in my office in Reading. Everything from servers to printers, with desktops and laptops in the middle.

We have fairly standard stuff here. Approx 10 HP ProLiant servers, 50 Dell workstations and laptops, and <10 HP printers.

Does anyone here know of or better yet can recommend a company that would offer a reasonably priced service to support my hardware? I would definitely not need someone based on site full time. Telephone support with visits when hardware is faulty would be ideal.

All help much appreciated!
 
We use the manufacturers support.

Dell onsite 3 year warranty, HP 4 year onsite server warranty and the HP printers we lease from HP so again its their problem, not ours.

When the warranty expires we replace. With the PC's and laptops we wait until they fail, with the servers we replace when the warranty expires.

I suggest you have way too many printers. Replace the 10 printers for 2 or 3 big all singing all dancing ones and you'll save a fortune in hardware/support and consumables. Make them walk - its in the users interest for them to get up and walk every now and again for health reasons.
 
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I like that approach Sp!ke, its what I would do if I was doing it all from scratch, but they weren't bought that way to start with, and on most of the kit the 12 month warranty period is now over. Infuriating!
 
Get in touch with the manufacturers, most will extend the support for a fee.

Dell are now offering us an extra years onsite support for our laptops for 3+ year old machines.

Printer support is a con, big monthly fees and for some reason each failure is considered a consumable item and is chargeable. Even paper trays are considered consumables....
 
What level of support are you looking for? As someone who runs an IT support company I can probably make a recommendation!
 
What level of support are you looking for? As someone who runs an IT support company I can probably make a recommendation!

Okay, possible scenarios could be anything from a failed disk on an HP server, to a failed screen on a laptop, to a server with a problem causing it to fall over every 2 days requiring some detailed investigation.

The assumption would be my IT resource on site would not necessarily be trained up in all technologies and may lack all of the skills to diagnose technical problems him or herself.

I'd be looking to have a company at the end of the phone who could arrange the fix (which depending on the contract could be chargable). If onsite help is required - a new server part for instance - I'm not really fussed if the company come out themselves to fix it or use their relationship with HP to do it. Likewise with Dell for the workstations.

Does that make sense?
 
We may well be able to help, this is pretty much our core business, will send PM
 
I suggest you have way too many printers. Replace the 10 printers for 2 or 3 big all singing all dancing ones and you'll save a fortune in hardware/support and consumables. Make them walk - its in the users interest for them to get up and walk every now and again for health reasons.
Will probably save on paper too, as the short walk might discourage unnecessary printing.

I recently attending a very good workshop on learning from the Maasai people of Eastern Africa, and the following came up: "Printers on every desk are corporate goats over-grazing your businesses working capital"

Quite true.
 
Will probably save on paper too, as the short walk might discourage unnecessary printing.

I recently attending a very good workshop on learning from the Maasai people of Eastern Africa, and the following came up: "Printers on every desk are corporate goats over-grazing your businesses working capital"

Quite true.

Thanks guys. I'm aware of all of this and currently have only 5 printers in the entire building, which is pretty much as low as it will go.

The only reason I said less than 10 was for capacity planning purposes. :)
 
I recently attending a very good workshop on learning from the Maasai people of Eastern Africa, and the following came up: "Printers on every desk are corporate goats over-grazing your businesses working capital"

I must say I found that funny, Learning best office practices from a tribe of Maassai.... errr..... ok. How did the sponsoring company promote such a thing? :rolleyes:
 
Will probably save on paper too, as the short walk might discourage unnecessary printing.

I recently attending a very good workshop on learning from the Maasai people of Eastern Africa, and the following came up: "Printers on every desk are corporate goats over-grazing your businesses working capital"

Quite true.

there wasnt a guy there asking people if he can use their account of the king of somewhere as he's having problems with his bank account by chance? :D
 
I need a company to support the IT hardware in my office in Reading. Everything from servers to printers, with desktops and laptops in the middle.

We have fairly standard stuff here. Approx 10 HP ProLiant servers, 50 Dell workstations and laptops, and <10 HP printers.

Does anyone here know of or better yet can recommend a company that would offer a reasonably priced service to support my hardware? I would definitely not need someone based on site full time. Telephone support with visits when hardware is faulty would be ideal.

All help much appreciated!

I can thoroughly recommend Eurotech Computer Services on 01932 260472.

They have amongst their clients some of the largest and most respected Oil companies around!
 
Printer support is a con, big monthly fees and for some reason each failure is considered a consumable item and is chargeable. Even paper trays are considered consumables....

I disagree here.
Consumables are just that and are listed clearly in the original information. On some models a paper cassette may be a consumable due to the feed system being bulit in and them only having a certain design life. Other consumables are fusers, PCU and toner. Just about everything else will be inclusive.

We cover HP warranty and carepack nationally and contract work for other large manufacturers as well as our own direct customers on the complete spectrum of system hardware and add ons.
HP in particular never charge for damage even when they should, so the customer gets a really good deal.
 
I've just spent a fortune on a works colour printer because before the service people would come and look at it we were expected to replace every consumable - it was ridiculous. Turns out it was just a flaming naff printer known for being kack. So I just bought a new one in the end which as part of the purchase price has a 5 year service with it. And guess what - it works!

When your IT works it's great, when it doesn't it's pants and the service cover you have can be your saviour or your doom. Choose with care.
 
To echo Dieselmans comments - I install quite a bit of kit in the North, and have never been let down by HP, Kyocera or Oki. Dell however have varied from being excellent (in warranty) to being crap (out of warranty) and unable to get parts even if willing to pay silly money for them.

Gotta take a reasonably step back and look at the big picture on stuff. Servers should last 5 yrs, take 3-4yrs cover then replace if anything breaks. Desktops should last 3yrs, take 2-3 yrs cover then retire or use for spares. Laser printers normally are junk by the time the second fuser replacement comes round, inkjets are generally junk from the factory....Stick with 3com/cisco/HP small networking stuff (and cisco/3com/foundry for bigger bits)..
 
I look after a large HP estate and im more than satisfied with their next day on site warranty and if they can't fix it , they send you a complete new one from holland , so everyones a winner.

You need to sit down and work out a refresh policy for your estate and take into account if your going to take out the extra warranty to take it beyond the standard 3.
 
To echo Dieselmans comments - I install quite a bit of kit in the North, and have never been let down by HP, Kyocera or Oki. Dell however have varied from being excellent (in warranty) to being crap (out of warranty) and unable to get parts even if willing to pay silly money for them.

Gotta take a reasonably step back and look at the big picture on stuff. Servers should last 5 yrs, take 3-4yrs cover then replace if anything breaks. Desktops should last 3yrs, take 2-3 yrs cover then retire or use for spares. Laser printers normally are junk by the time the second fuser replacement comes round, inkjets are generally junk from the factory....Stick with 3com/cisco/HP small networking stuff (and cisco/3com/foundry for bigger bits)..

I'll second that - had almost no troubles with Cisco, while of the AT routers one seems to keel over about once a month! Desktops; we use Apple Macintosh'es - Applecare used to be amazing (courier pickup and 24 hour return) - but not its losing it umph...

I found that laptops are a mixed bunxch. You will have "that group" of users who will need a new laptop every few months, and "that other group" who will go years between laptops - its all down to the users care imo!

Laser Printers we use a company called LaserLife - they are quite good (same day callouts within london, 24 hours outside - and we fall outside by a few miles!) The only "consumable" they charged us for was a fuser kit that was faulty when we ordered it! and when we contested it (saying we just needed a replacement of the faulty one) they sent another one free!

Inkjets... bargepoles come to mind... Our policy is that we will supply ink for 3 inkjets (Hp K550, Hp 970c and an A3 that I can't remember) - but we wont support them. (Though that said, I do go and help every now and then!)

So yes, generally speaking, other than hardware - the producer warranty is what we use (or the suppliers)

Michele
 
I found that laptops are a mixed bunxch. You will have "that group" of users who will need a new laptop every few months, and "that other group" who will go years between laptops - its all down to the users care imo!

Inkjets... bargepoles come to mind... Our policy is that we will supply ink for 3 inkjets (Hp K550, Hp 970c and an A3 that I can't remember) - but we wont support them. (Though that said, I do go and help every now and then!)

Laptops: Toshiba Tecra all the way, unified docking, brilliant warranty (currently moneyback if it fails) and seldom get any failures.

Inkjets - had one of the six K550s I've install fail, failed printhead, took two weeks for HP to send a replacement. They are the best of the bunch though.
 
Laptops: Toshiba Tecra all the way, unified docking, brilliant warranty (currently moneyback if it fails) and seldom get any failures.

Inkjets - had one of the six K550s I've install fail, failed printhead, took two weeks for HP to send a replacement. They are the best of the bunch though.

Strange you should mention that, of our K550's we've 2 failed printheads in the same unit! At first I thought it was the printhead that was "old" (3/4 months old) so I ordered another - the second failed almost immediately! After calling HP, they told me to do a firmware upgrade (which I might add, didn't work from a Mac!). When that failed (mostly because their OsX firmware program refused to start!) they sent out a replacement unit (for the whole printer) took... uhmm... 2 days if I remember properly. A few weeks later the courier collected the old one.

But yes, back to my point - we had the heads fail too - seems like a fairly high mortality rate on them!

As for laptops, personally I'm a toshiba fan... but we're an Apple Institute... and Toshiba doesn't support OsX yet :p (but I prefer the Satellite Pro series... ;)
 
I know a very good company that could help you out with this, if you would like to pm me your details I can arrange for them to call / visit you.

Regards

Tan
 

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