Networking: A Beginner’s Guide Fifth Edition- P45:I have run into many people over the years who have gained good even impressive working knowledge of PCs, operating systems, applications, and common problems and solutions. Many of these people are wizards with desktop computers. | 202 Networking A Beginner s Guide Is the vendor sufficiently successful and stable that you can expect the company to be around for the entire useful life of the unit What other value-added services are offered if problems occur Other factors that strongly influence serviceability are often overlooked. How many computers does the maker sell and is the specific model that you are buying widely used These factors are important because a widely used computer is more likely to be supported when new software or hardware comes out. Companies that make software and hardware know they must ensure that their products work properly with popular computer brands and models. Suppose that you use computers from a small local company or even worse build the computers yourself and some software package or operating system that comes out in a year or two fails to work properly on your machines. The maker of the software or hardware might say something like Well we haven t tested on that computer so we don t know why our product isn t working right. While the maker might act in good faith to resolve the issue the problem might take much longer to fix on a widely used system and it might never be resolved. On the other hand if you re using a top-tier computer such as one from Compaq Dell or HP or other top-tier brands the vendor of the new product probably knows how to resolve any problems that arise and has already done so before the product was shipped. TIP If your company runs an application that is vital to its business but that is not widely used it sometimes pays to find out which computers the application maker uses. If you know that the application maker has built the application using a particular make you can reduce your risk of having trouble with that application by considering using the same brand in your organization. Author s Note I once joined a company that had been purchasing no-name clones for its desktop computers. In my first week I set up five brand-new units .
