I'm shopping for a complete laptop "solution" for a staff of 20, in four cities, including hardware, software, service, support, data transfer, training, backup, etc. We need it to "just work", and we don't have the staff to do much beyond basic support.
I've priced machines from Dell and HP (no idea if those are good vendors), and asked them if they offer, and what it would cost for, the other services. In some cases, my questions to the vendor fall into an admitted "gray area". Asking whether they can help with transferring data from old machines, for example, is met with a suggestion to buy a Detto cable. I can't ask everyone to do that for themselves, and I can't do it for them on the West Coast, when I'm on the East Coast.
Thoughts on any of the questions involved would be most welcome.
- How to choose hardware (for basic office needs) that's likely to be reliable and low-maintenance
- Whether it's reasonable to expect a hardware vendor to offer any of the other services
- If not, if there's another outfit to whom it's cost effective to outsource multi-city support
- Windows 7? XP?
