From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Jan 31 3:35:30 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mailg.telia.com (mailg.telia.com [194.22.194.26]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A78FB14A20 for ; Mon, 31 Jan 2000 03:35:27 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from james.wilde@telia.com) Received: from tbvhks12 (t3o72p95.telia.com [62.20.151.95]) by mailg.telia.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id MAA21881; Mon, 31 Jan 2000 12:34:54 +0100 (CET) Message-ID: <004601bf6bdf$4c2140f0$8c0aa8c0@hk.tbv.se> From: "James A Wilde" To: "Lorenzo Cavassa" , References: <20000131121646.A28644@monviso.alpcom.it> Subject: Re: Dell or Compaq Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 12:35:37 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG ----- Original Message ----- From: Lorenzo Cavassa To: Sent: Monday, January 31, 2000 12:16 Subject: Dell or Compaq > > Because i'm involved in the task, i'm searching for the best hardware > platform that can supply the same services with the same overall speed. > > I'm oriented to buy Dell or Compaq (Intel) servers (one or more), but i have > several questions about: > I know a lot of people will disagree with me and it is not my intention to start another religious war, but to the best of my ability, I keep Compaq out of my shop on principle. Others in the organisation have sneaked them into my regret. The reason? _Nothing_ is off the peg with Compaq. Everything, it seems, needs special drivers if not special Compaq hardware which costs three times as much as off the shelf stuff from reliable manufacturers. And I have a constant performance problem with the few machines we own. The funny thing is the people who were so keen to get them in the first place are unable to configure them. I found one of them displaying 16 colours, sound card unconfigured and running like a one-legged dog in syrup. It was being used as a workstation by our CEO. I've managed to fix the first two - special drivers from Compaq's home site, of course: standard ATI and ESS drivers were no use - and I'll be trying to fix the latter this week. Maybe I'll replace it - a 450 Mhz PII - with an old 50 Mhz 486 I've got lying about... On the other hand, the Dell I have as my principal machine at home gives me no problems and first class performance - although I am a bit surprised that they make use of cable-select for hard drive control. Just my $0.02 mvh/regards James To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message