Itwerx is a service-disabled veteran-owned managed IT provider serving Seattle-area businesses, founded in 2005. This is a buyer’s guide for company laptops and desktops, written for whoever has to sign off on the purchase.
Three tiers, and one of them is a trap
Most manufacturers – Dell, HP and Lenovo among them – sell PCs and laptops in roughly three tiers. Low end is advertised everywhere, sold through every office supply store and big-box retailer, and pitched at students and small businesses. Middle of the road is rarely sold at retail, presented online as a step up and aimed squarely at business use. High end is never sold at retail either, and shows up on discount mainly when a model is being cleared for a refresh.
Skip the low end entirely, regardless of who makes it. A unit from that tier that turns out not to be junk is a fluke, and even an extended no-questions-asked warranty does not make up for the time lost exercising it.
Mid-range is usually the sweet spot
High end stays on the list, but near the back of it. The middle tier is where the value actually sits, for a few concrete reasons: it typically carries better warranty options (five years instead of two or three, with faster onsite repair), the hardware itself tends to be built to a higher standard because of the longer warranty terms and the volume commitments behind them, and the bundled software – drivers, utilities, firmware – gets more testing, both up front from larger enterprise sales and on an ongoing basis from a larger installed base reporting issues.
Buy a model that has already proven itself
New models across every tier arrive every year, but their useful lifespan differs: low end typically gets one year of production, mid-range and high end run two to three years with warranty support available well beyond that. Every tier also has the occasional lemon model. The practical answer is to only consider models that have already been out for at least two years, checked against reviews or a peer’s actual experience, and to wait for a sale price down near half the original – which most models eventually hit as they age out of the current lineup. On laptops specifically, the extended warranty is worth adding; on desktop PCs it usually is not.
Itwerx Corp is a service-disabled veteran-owned small business providing IT services across Seattle, Bellevue, Everett and Snohomish County. This is the kind of thing our hardware lifecycle work deals with – talk to us about yours.
