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Recommendations
The recommendations following are based upon many years of experience in supporting large environments of business workstations and servers as well as years of experience upgrading and expanding computers. These recommendations can change at any time because we stay updated on the current technology. So it is beneficial to you to check this site each time you are on the market for hardware or software. As always, contact us with any specific questions. If you are in the market for reliable desktop PC hardware, we recommend the Dell OptiPlex line. They offer enough power for most people including those who do gaming or want to expand the capabilities of their computers in the future. We like the minitower models since they offer expansion room for adding other bay devices like a tape drive or more DVD/CD drives. These systems also have room for more than one hard drive. For the money, you are best served by purchasing the system with dual optical drives. http://www.dell.com/ QPC is a Dell reseller. If you wish to get a discount on a business-class Dell system, give us a call. If you need to add a network interface card to your existing PC, choose the 3Com 3C905CX-TX-M. This is a very reliable and standardized, yet affordable NIC. It's the best NIC on the market for a desktop PC. The only line of Dell notebooks we recommend is the Latitude line. These are intended to be more of a business line notebook, which means they are more standardized and long-term supportable. Currently, we recommend one of two Dell Latitude models depending upon your needs. We do not recommend any of the other Latitude models because they are either underpowered for long-term usefulness, or are so small they are difficult to use. With micro-notebook models, the notebook keyboard and screen can be too small to productively use.
Yes, that's right. They are almost identical systems. The D830 has a noticeably larger screen and more powerful video card. If you want to do serious gaming with your notebook, then you need the D830. In some cases you may want to look at the Precision laptops. Dell PowerEdge servers offer a great range of solid, high-performing, easy to support servers for small to medium businesses. Contact us for more detailed advice in this area. Dell monitors are high-quality and have an excellent warranty. Depending upon your needs, you may even want to get a Dell TV and use it for your PC monitor in combination TV/DVD/VCR. QPC has wall-mounted several of these units and they are very useful. If a person is a really heavy computer user, the best fit is a more square monitor than a more oblong (widescreen) shaped TV. As a Dell VAR, QPC can get you great prices on high-quality Dell monitors. Over the years, we have supported 500 printers, and at least 200 different types. When you have an experience like this, you understand the differences in reliability and supportability between printers. There are two good manufacturers of printers today. HP and Xerox. When you buy a printer or a multifunction unit, you need one that is going to be long-term reliable and easy to support. It should be easy to install and the manufacturer should keep the drivers updated as your operating system updates. HP is the one manufacturer that does all of that well. HP makes the most reliable and easy to support printers. As you know, we have no affiliation with HP. When we go to a client's place of work, we love to see HP printers. Whenever we see other brands, we know there will be supportability issues. A person who wants the ability to print in color and black and white, scan, fax and copy all in one unit should get a multifunction unit. These are commonly referred to as all-in-one. The best all-in-one, multifunction unit made today is the HP OfficeJet 5610. It is the best because it is very reliable and very easy to use. You don't need to be trained to use it. It has a menu that walks you through how to use it. It is also just plain intuitive. When looking up printers or any other computer hardware, you want to reference it by its actual model number. So look on HP's website for the actual model number and use that when searching for it on the Internet. Buy.com offers very good prices on many units. You should always pay attention to the recommended paper that is listed in the printer's user manual. If you try to put the wrong kind or cheaper paper in the printer, it may jam and turn out to be a waste of your money. We also like the HP LaserJet 30xx family. This is a laser, black&white all-in-one. If you need a business-class printer that duplexes (prints on both sides), then the HP LaserJet 2300DN is for you. It prints 25 pages per minute and prints in beautiful LaserJet quality. The 2300DN prints only in black and white, but the majority of print jobs are in black and white. This printer can also be shared on a network. Q2475A is the model number for this printer. Call us for any other recommendations or needs you have.
Networking Equipment: Firewall/Routers, Switches, and Wireless Networking
You may hear technical people talk about how good Cisco equipment is. But do they ever talk about the price or the fact that you have to pay for a very expensive annual support contract with Cisco to get drivers or firmware updates? No, most people do not look at the total cost of ownership of a unit, software or hardware. Cisco may be a great option for a company with thousands of employees who has their own IT staff to configure the very complex equipment and pay the annual support costs. But for a small business or a home network, Cisco just doesn't make any sense. This is where NETGEAR comes in. For some businesses, WatchGuard equipment is best. It is more expensive than NETGEAR, but has the load-carrying capacity and additional functions that NETGEARs don't have. If you are a home user or small business with a high-speed Internet connection, you need a hardware-based firewall. Hardware-based firewalls usually function as a router, switch, and DHCP server. Some models are also a wireless access point. In your small business, you may find that the 4 LAN ports on the firewall are not enough. In that case you can easily expand your network by simply adding wireless devices or a switch. If you need a USB capable print server, HP JetDirect print servers should be used. See the table for more details or contact us. NETGEAR currently makes a good variety of units for any of your small business or home networking needs. Itemized recommendations follow. The prices of these units is very reasonable. Check them out at Buy.com. You will be surprised. http://www.netgear.com/ We also use Linksys devices in many cases. Keep in mind that they lack one key component. They do not allow for DHCP reservations. This can be a problem in cases where you desire to have reliable remote support options. Larger businesses that have more than 10 employees should purchase a WatchGuard that is appropriately sized for their needs.
We highly recommend Trend Micro Antivirus/Antispyware. Whenever you go to buy the software, just buy the latest version you can buy at the time. The more recent versions have script detection and blocking capabilities. This is very useful in the war against trojans and evil scripts that may be loaded to your system by evil websites. We call them evil, because the only purpose for these scripts is to invade and take over your computer for bad and often illegal uses. Updated antivirus/antispyware software is a key component in your system's defense mechanism. Trend offers free tech support. If you are a non-profit looking for good, free tools, check out Comodo's antivirus tool. If you have need for two licenses, you should look at a 3-user pack. It is cheaper than buying two licenses separately. And if you have need for 5 licenses or more, get a volume license agreement for the antivirus software. For servers, we recommend Microsoft Windows 2003 Server R2. If you are buying a new server, you should go with X64 version since all server hardware you buy now is 64-bit capable. If you have a situation where you still have some old business software that will not run on X64, you should put that software on a virtual machine on the X64 main server. For desktop PCs and notebooks, we recommend Microsoft Windows XP Professional still. The vast majority of business applications don't run on Vista yet. We do not recommend Windows XP Home edition. XP Home Edition does not allow for granular security control. Many security options are just not available. So you may think you are getting a deal on the price, but this neutered OS is just not worth your money. Now that Vista is out, we recommend you ONLY get Vista on a new PC. We don't recommend installing Vista on old hardware. Keep in mind that you should stick with Vista Business or Vista Ultimate. We don't recommend using Vista for business, only for home computers due to the lack of compatibility with business critical applications at this time. ZoneLabs ZoneAlarm used to be the industry leader of software-based firewalls. We don't recommend it anymore because ZoneAlarm now tries to take over your email and antivirus tools. They should have stuck with what they were good at ... firewall only. We highly recommend that every computer has a software-based firewall installed and configured properly. Comodo firewall is free and very effective. We do not recommend ZoneAlarm Pro because it tries to do too many things and ends up stepping on other applications. If you have Trend AV/AS or Norton now, you may not realize that this software comes with its own firewall application. You don't need to get the fancy product. The plain AV/AS software comes with a firewall already. So if you have one of those tools already, you shouldn't install another firewall. When you have more than one application installed on your computer that does the same function, there are bound to be conflicts. This makes problems difficult to troubleshoot, and their interaction is unpredictable. It's best to have your firewall do just that and nothing more. This multiple functionality software is the same reason we do not recommend Norton Internet Security. American Power Conversion Corporation, APC, is the industry leader for UPS and surge suppression hardware. http://www.apcc.com/ When shopping for UPS units, pay special attention to how many outlets on the device are actually UPS protected versus just surge suppression protected. If you are planning to use the UPS to protect your computer, then be sure to purchase one that has the capability to talk to the PC and shut it down in event of an extended power outage. The PC operating system can become corrupt in the event of a hard power outage. A UPS with auto-shutdown software can fully protect against this risk. The VA output the UPS delivers versus the demand your equipment places on the UPS determines the runtime. Runtime is how long the UPS will provide battery power to all the devices powered by it on the UPS outlets. So the larger the VA output of the UPS, the longer the runtime. You must be sure you purchase a unit with enough capacity to protect all of your devices without overloading the UPS. APC has a very nice UPS model calculator on their website.
Where you buy your equipment and software depends upon your comfort level with Internet purchasing and the amount of anonymity you desire. You should always buy a desktop PC, workstation, notebook, or server directly from the manufacturer if at all possible. This will make your warranty servicing easier. Dell and HP both offer refurbished units on their websites with product availability changing each day. The warranty offered on refurbished units is identical to that for new units, so we see no added benefit to buying new unless you just enjoy paying more. If you desire the ultimate in anonymity, take your cash to a local retailer and buy your item. If you are comfortable with Internet purchasing, we recommend Buy.com. They usually have most items and have very good security. They often offer free shipping on items as well. One thing you should be very cautious of is taking advice from anyone who works at a retail store. While they may be able to tell you where so-and-so is located in the store, we highly encourage you to not expect information of any more value than that from them. If they really knew more, they would likely not have that job. As always, when in doubt, contact us.
Over the years I have used a lot of different website hosting solution providers.
I don't like using the same hosting provider for email, DNS, domain, website.
Check out my Breakfast Bytes radio show archive from 3/24/2007 for more information as to why.
I have found one website hosting provider that has a good blend of price and great support.
They have been able to fulfill every software support requirement of all my clients.
Their support has been great and they have successfully recovered websites from backup when they blew up.
So I strongly recommend Infosaic.
There are a multitude of reasons why you may not want to use your ISP-provided email account. Certainly, if you are in business, you need to have an email address that matches your domain. You don't want to lose your email address and have to incur the expense of changing all your marketing materials when your email address changes. For most businesses, even one-person businesses, it makes the most sense to go with an outsourced Exchange-based email solution. Many businesses of 40 people use a hosted solution because it is more cost effective than having their own Exchange server. A business may initially think that ~$120 per user per year is a expensive. However, it's a fixed cost. It represents your email TCO (total cost of ownership). However, if you host Exchange on your own server, you must pay labor fees to maintain, service, and patch it. Thus, you have no way of controlling TCO. If you are a business that has a full-time IT manager, and you have more than 60 employees, it may make sense to host Exchange internally. But keep in mind that we mean a FULL-TIME IT manager, not someone who you call IT manager, yet a chunk of their duties involve something other than management of the comptuer systems. Managing Exchange takes significant talent, training, and time. Most small businesses cannot afford to hire a technical person who has adequate training to properly manage Exchange so that it is a stable and successful tool for the business.
Please see the whitepaper on Exchange-based email for more details.
If you do decide to get POP3 or Exchange-based email, we recommend Mail2Web as the vendor of choice for these services. Click link below. DynDNS.com should be used for domain and DNS hosting. NEVER host your DNS, domain, email, and website with the same vendor. Listen to the 3/24/2007 Breakfast Bytes radio show archive for extensive details.
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Recommendations Summary
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