Expert: Bobbert - 3/8/2011

Question
I would really appreciate some advice regarding a computer course assignment I have. I am supposed to pretend I am a computer consultant and come up with computers and peripherals for an imaginary small business of 2 employees in the office and one on the road.The budget is $10,000 in startup costs, and $1000 a year for maintenance and supplies. I am so overwhelmed! There are so many computer companies and I don't know the first thing about GB and so forth. Can you please help me?

Answer
Primarily the first thing you would need to know in this situation is the company's usage scenario - if we're simply doing bookkeeping or e-mail you can essentially purchase anything you like (and you should be able to come in under budget by around $7000). However, if you're dealing with something like animation or other content creation (CAD/CAM/etc, as you'd find in an engineering or architectural firm) you can expect to spend better than $10,000 per system.

Once you have this in mind, you can go ahead and start shopping - I generally suggest users to go with an establish company that has a record of quality customer service, namely Dell, HP, and Apple. All of them offer small/medium-business products, however you don't need to explicitly buy something labeled as small/medium-business (there will be no explicit difference in hardware, only in customer service contracts). If we're simply doing office work, you can probably grab systems for $500 a piece or so, excluding warranty (and here's where the SMB parts might make sense, as you can usually purchase a 3 or 5 year warranty). Generally external peripherals, like the keyboard, mouse, and so on are included, but check the package that you're purchasing - monitors are usually extra.

Other peripherals are going to be contextually dependent; some offices may need high capacity printers, or scanners, some offices may need web cams or microphones, others may need plotters or other design tools. This is all context dependent, and can easily exceed your budget depending on what you're tasked with buying for.

-bob