Custom Pc's in Schools

[Sweatford]

Hi guys, 

I work at a School in England as a IT apprentice and my mentor says that custom PC's aren't really viable for Schools, but why ?

[Kirky2k15]

Cuz money...

School's like to purchase using grants or pcs subsidised by various special things like tesco school vouchers and all that bollox...

[derekb108]

clearly they have money to waste.

[Minzo]

They need someone to blame if shit goes down.


If a student builds all the computers, who is going to do the support? The student?

They need a reliable manufacturer.

[Kirky2k15]

1 minute ago, JaredM54 said:

Too time consuming to build/maintain + cheaper to buy a bunch of pre made ones.

Agree, although the year 11s in the school I worked at did a project on building pcs and these pcs were integrated and used everyday on the school's network... Needless to say they were all cr@p and used to require re-imaging constantly...

[ybriK]

Building custom PCs is a huge waste of time and investment in resources: people and hardware. Not to mention what if all the motherboards came DOA?

[derekb108]

Thats why Dell Exists, Dell's part replacement service is the best ive seen.

[ShiroArikawa]

6 minutes ago, Minzo said:

They need someone to blame if shit goes down.


If a student builds all the computers, who is going to do the support? The student?

They need a reliable manufacturer.

ARE YOU SAYING IM UNRELIABLE!?

[derekb108]

8 minutes ago, ShiroArikawa said:

ARE YOU SAYING IM UNRELIABLE!?

buying indivual parts, is nonsense especially when you can lease pcs from dell, they will look after every pc componant and the end of the lease they will return the system to them or you can purchase them for a $1 per computer.

https://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/dell-business-lease

[ybriK]

1 minute ago, derekb108 said:

buying indivual parts, is nonsense especially when you can lease pcs from dell, they will look after every pc componant and the end of the lease they will return the system to them, you can purchase them for a $1

https://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/dell-business-lease

$1

 

[ShiroArikawa]

3 minutes ago, derekb108 said:

buying indivual parts, is nonsense especially when you can lease pcs from dell, they will look after every pc componant and the end of the lease they will return the system to them or you can purchase them for a $1 per computer.

https://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/dell-business-lease

Remove the comma boy.

[derekb108]

1 minute ago, ShiroArikawa said:

Remove the comma boy.

Spoiler

Noooooooooooooo!

 

[ShiroArikawa]

1 minute ago, derekb108 said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Noooooooooooooo!

 

Learn to play upon the wrath of the forums, as you are indeed new.

[FoxxyRin]

I'm not sure about England, but I know that in the States, schools often have a very small budget and rely on sponsorship for their PCs. For example, my middle school had a program sponsored by Dell, and every PC in the school was a shitty Dell. The computer club was even part of their "Dell Tech Know How" program, where we got to "build our own PCs" (aka refurbish our own shitty Dell desktop), and take them home. It was pretty cool.

 

EDIT: Another point that may be an issue, is something that my sister (who's a teacher) brought up the other day. When buying with grant money and such, the websites you're allowed to use is VERY limited. She needed a graphics tablet for her classroom (she uses it for students to draw on the projector screen), and was told she had to go through the manufacturer's site directly for the product. On one hand, she ended up with a $300 Wacom to meet her size/wireless needs. On the other, she could have gotten three of the Chinese branded one I recommended for the same price, lol. If you had to do this for a PC, this would easily drive the cost up like crazy, since they're always selling their parts for MSRP.

[derekb108]

1 minute ago, ShiroArikawa said:

Learn to play upon the wrath of the forums, as you are indeed new.

won't be new for long! lol!

 

[Minzo]

18 minutes ago, ShiroArikawa said:

ARE YOU SAYING IM UNRELIABLE!?

Yes.

[ShiroArikawa]

2 minutes ago, FoxxyRin said:

I'm not sure about England, but I know that in the States, schools often have a very small budget and rely on sponsorship for their PCs. For example, my middle school had a program sponsored by Dell, and every PC in the school was a shitty Dell. The computer club was even part of their "Dell Tech Know How" program, where we got to "build our own PCs" (aka refurbish our own shitty Dell desktop), and take them home. It was pretty cool.

Ah, no fair. I wish my school did that.... They have macs from 2007 with Duo e3xxx's in them with 4 gb of 1067mhz ddr2, OR the better alternative, dell HTPC's with an Intel duo e8400 and 4gb of 1067 Mhz ddr2

[ShiroArikawa]

Just now, Minzo said:

Yes.

You rude swedish boy, I'll call your king and get you locked up in a mexican prison.

[FoxxyRin]

4 minutes ago, ShiroArikawa said:

Ah, no fair. I wish my school did that.... They have macs from 2007 with Duo e3xxx's in them with 4 gb of 1067mhz ddr2, OR the better alternative, dell HTPC's with an Intel duo e8400 and 4gb of 1067 Mhz ddr2

It wasn't that great. Most of them died within 6 months, lmao. Their specs were also horrible. I don't remember the processor or anything, but they had like 128GB HDDs and less than 2GB of RAM. This was ~10 years ago, back when XP was shiny and new. Even by the standards then, I remember the PCs freakin' sucked. The only cool thing about them was the fact that I got to bring home an Enterprise copy of Windows XP, which my sister's boyfriend bought off me for $50 at the time. Only now I know how stupid I was, but $50 is a LOT of money when you're 12! LOL.

[derekb108]

youse are lucky, my school was still using Mackintosh classic II computers when I left in 2003.

[A/C]

 

 

 

Although we're not talking about a gaming PC here "per se", the point this video makes is somewhat applicable here, companies buy components in bulk and get them much cheaper that way - you could say you get a better value. And you know how schools ano other goverment agencies are when it comes to "money saving".

But more importantly, I think that  @Kirky2k15 @derekb108 have nailed the correct answer up there, it's much cheaper to lease a PC from dell or to justify your subsidised costs when pucrhasing pre-built systems in bulk than individual components, it would be a nightmare to anyone who's not a techhead. Remember, we do this as a hobby and enjoy building PCs, for people who work at schools it's just that - work, and everyone wants their work to be as simple as possible. Combine that with what I've said before and I think we have an answer for your question.

[cragger89]

Custom PCs are the route my team take in the IT team for the College I work at, but we have to put a lot of man time into the builds.

It is cheaper and means we get to take advantage of longer warranties on individual RAM kits from Kingston and Pro Samsung SSDs.

Each build including an OEM Windows OS install/license costs us £330 - i3, 8GB RAM, SSD, XFX PSU. We always get whatever the latest i3 is.

[KuJoe]

Warranty and support that come with bulk orders of pre-built machines are the sole reason why most businesses and organizations don't do custom PCs. Life is so much easier when you tell HP/Dell/etc... "this doesn't work" and you send the whole unit back and get a brand new replacement without having to jump through hoops or pay anything extra.

[A/C]

I suppose you and your college team need your PCs for a specific purpose, as opposed to a general purpose the school PCs are meant for?

Also, as I've demonstrated with Linus's video up there, the prebuilts are generally much better value for money if you buy a general purpose PC, as ASUS pays much less for a celeron, or a pentium chip than we would in retail....

[You_are_a_cunt]

Prebuilts are cheaper, especially when you're buying in bulk. The average school here (within city limits, that is), has at least 60-70 PCs (which includes IT classes and other uses, such as non-IT labs and whatnot).

Most schools (here, at least) handle purchases through a higher authority than the school itself, and there's contracts and deals in the middle of all of this.

Cheaper isn't always better, but that's what they think around here at least.