The Operator: July 19, 2009

Equipment - what we like, why, and how long you should expect it to last

There are planty of companies who want to sell you hardware, software and services - and many of them do an excellent job at a fair price. But that doesn't mean that their objectives are in line with your own.

No one (well, no one I know) is in a hurry to buy more equipment than they need, to pay too much for it, or to have to replace it any sooner than absolutely necessary. So how do you find a solution that fits exactly your needs when there are a hundred models of every widget you can imagine?

It's not a new question, and the age-old answer is to seek the advice of someone who has been dealing with the same problem longer, more successfully or at a larger scale than you.

Now, being geeks, we really like doing that. Every day. And in excrutiating detail. But we also know that we have to live with the equipment that we choose and recommend, not just sell it and walk away. That has made all the difference.

Anything that we recommend or sell we assume that we are going to have to install, maintain and even swap under warranty for no additional service costs. Typically, we get paid the same whether a piece of equipment is flawless or funky. Balance that against the realization that the more we ask someone to spend on stuff, the less they can get done - now you know where we are coming from.

So here are our simplest recommendations - you are under no obligation to concur or comply, but our preferences are based on the thousands of unique users we connect and support every month, and the calls that we take 24 x 7 to keep things humming:

Desktops and Servers: HP - the BUSINESS CLASS models with 3 year warranty (and buy a spare for critical roles!)

Hotel Wireless Gear: HP, hands down (lifetime warranty, SOAP support, half the cost of Cisco and Nomadix for more functionality and better remote support for hotel use), HP bought Colubris last fall.

Network Switches: HP (lifetime warranty), but on occasion we use Netgear for PoE

Backup Services: Mozy Pro (cheap and easy) or VaultLogix (PCIcompliant)

Every one of these recommendations should provide reliable service for 3 to 5 years. You were hoping for 7? Hmmm. We need to talk about risk and business continuity.