Looking for two Lap tops, Can I get some help choosing which.

[RMerlin]

There is a HUGE difference between consumer grade laptops and business grade laptops in both price and quality. I suspect had you also bought consumer grade from ANY of the "big vendors" and placed them in a business use environment that they too would have failed in a similar rate and fashion. I've done the "study" by example many times for customers.

I must have sold hundred of PCs over 20+ years in this business. Acer was the only brand to give me such high failure rates.

Would you put an AC88 into an office environment as the core AP/Router??? I'd like to think your answer is no.

I have a number of Asus routers in various offices. Quite a few using an RT-AC66U_B1 as their OpenVPN server. Some of these reaching close to a full year of uptime with zero issues.

You don't need a 300$ router to handle an office of 5-10.

 

[coxhaus]

You don't need a 300$ router to handle an office of 5-10.

So what about 11 or 19? Just seeing where you draw the line is in the sand. Do they run IP phones?

I use Cisco small business routers, switches, and wireless for my daughter's small business. Her business is only a little bigger. Four months ago she decided they wanted IP phones so I had to reprogram the L3 switch for a voice VLAN. What do you do with your site, throw the router away?

 

[Smokindog]

I must have sold hundred of PCs over 20+ years in this business. Acer was the only brand to give me such high failure rates.

I have a number of Asus routers in various offices. Quite a few using an RT-AC66U_B1 as their OpenVPN server. Some of these reaching close to a full year of uptime with zero issues.

You don't need a 300$ router to handle an office of 5-10.

Ya, I'm not talking small business stuff, especially not that small. I run my home tighter than most small business footprints. That's like "pro-sumer".

I'll stand by my statement that any consumer grade device will exhibit the same behavior when used in a true business environment. It's trouble waiting to happen.

PS - my customers bought 10's of thousands per year

 

[RMerlin]

So what about 11 or 19? Just seeing where you draw the line is in the sand. Do they run IP phones?

I don't base it on a fixed number, I base it on the environment as a whole. By 5-10, I meant small offices.

Currently only a few of my customers are using prosumer products (Ubiquity and Microtik). They come with their own set of issues.

 

[RMerlin]

I'll stand by my statement that any consumer grade device will exhibit the same behavior when used in a true business environment. It's trouble waiting to happen.

I fail to see how a "business environment" would cause a laptop's motherboard to fail within 2 years. And some of these weren't used by a business but by a home user BTW.

 

[coxhaus]

Currently only a few of my customers are using prosumer products (Ubiquity and Microtik). They come with their own set of issues.

Maybe you should try Cisco small business gear? It is real straight forward on setup and it just works. Cisco stuff handles IP phones easily.

 

[Smokindog]

I fail to see how a "business environment" would cause a laptop's motherboard to fail within 2 years. And some of these weren't used by a business but by a home user BTW.

Business use is typically more strenuous, includes more mobility/travel, and the devices see more abuse in general. More abuse translates into all kinds of additional stress on the cases and hardware plus more heat stress and other factors. They typically operate in dirtier environments adding issues to cooling and other operational problems. It's just a fact that a business device is NOT a consumer grade product.

There is no comparison and putting a consumer device into a business is asking for trouble. Yes, I'll stand pat on this and you can find data to back it up all over the net.

 

[RMerlin]

Maybe you should try Cisco small business gear? It is real straight forward on setup and it just works. Cisco stuff handles IP phones easily.

I had one with a Cisco PIX (from their previous IT consultant). We both discovered at some point that this PIX has a licensing limit of 10 (or 15?) NAT clients, which was discovered when he started getting smartphones appear on his recently installed AP. He paid the usual Cisco ransom to increase that licensing to the next level (150 clients)... and that PIX died a few months later. It was probably about 6-7 years old I'd say. Replaced with an Asus RT-AC66U_B1, and moved from Cisco VPN to OpenVPN. Happily running since then (about 4 or 5 years now).

So, just not a fan of Cisco's premium pricing. If I needed a prosummer router, I would rather look at Ubiquity or maybe Mikrotik (tho I'm not a big fan of that one Mikrotik I have deployed. Managing VPN clients is a PITA.)

 

[RMerlin]

Business use is typically more strenuous, includes more mobility/travel, and the devices see more abuse in general. More abuse translates into all kinds of additional stress on the cases and hardware plus more heat stress and other factors. They typically operate in dirtier environments adding issues to cooling and other operational problems. It's just a fact that a business device is NOT a consumer grade product.

Again, what kind of "business usage" would cause a laptop motherboard to wear out after only two years?

And actually, some home usages are far more intensive than business usage. At work you run Word, Excel, Outlook, and do some light browsing. At home, you run video games, you stream Netflix and Youtube, and you download 20-40 GB games over your Internet connection. More intensive both on your computer and on your router.

It's not about "home market" vs "business market". It's about "low-end" vs "high-end". The key isn't to go strictly for so-called business products, but to avoid low-end products, regardless of their intended market.

 

[coxhaus]

I had one with a Cisco PIX (from their previous IT consultant). We both discovered at some point that this PIX has a licensing limit of 10 (or 15?) NAT clients, which was discovered when he started getting smartphones appear on his recently installed AP. He paid the usual Cisco ransom to increase that licensing to the next level (150 clients)... and that PIX died a few months later. It was probably about 6-7 years old I'd say. Replaced with an Asus RT-AC66U_B1, and moved from Cisco VPN to OpenVPN. Happily running since then (about 4 or 5 years now).

So, just not a fan of Cisco's premium pricing. If I needed a prosummer router, I would rather look at Ubiquity or maybe Mikrotik (tho I'm not a big fan of that one Mikrotik I have deployed. Managing VPN clients is a PITA.)

Cisco PIX is old probably 15 or 20 years ago. You should of never bought an expansion on something that old. If you give the exact model I can look it up. I still have an old one I ran at home 25 years ago. You should of talked with a Cisco certified retail partner if are you playing with enterprise Cisco gear. The Cisco small business gear is not that way. The Cisco PIX was a great firewall in its' day but that was over many more than 5 years ago. It sounded like you were not up on Cisco enterprise firewalls and you tried to wing it. Not good.

You should not really be running consumer gear for businesses. You are doing the small business customer an injustice.

PS
I believe I was off on the Cisco PIX. I think it was 20 or 25 years ago. Time is getting away from me. And yes my old PIX still runs. It just won't move enough data.

 

[Smokindog]

Not going to argue anymore about this. It was my business. What I've said is backed up by research and real world experience. I've given you multiple scenarios from case flex to heat to dirt to vibration to a host of other issues.

Any successful professional in the field will tell you the same thing, "placing consumer grade devices into a true business use is asking for failure".

Again, what kind of "business usage" would cause a laptop motherboard to wear out after only two years?

And actually, some home usages are far more intensive than business usage. At work you run Word, Excel, Outlook, and do some light browsing. At home, you run video games, you stream Netflix and Youtube, and you download 20-40 GB games over your Internet connection. More intensive both on your computer and on your router.

It's not about "home market" vs "business market". It's about "low-end" vs "high-end". The key isn't to go strictly for so-called business products, but to avoid low-end products, regardless of their intended market.

 

[Natey2]

Companies need to provide PCs that can take a beating because of all the security stuff (McAfee, Symantec, Tanium, FireEye, ... etc) the IT departments run on them, reduce other application performance, and burn them out prematurely. Compare disk i/o and cpu usage between a standard Windows installation and what Corporate IT departments do with their machines.

Having said that, I have an Asus home desktop PC at home (4th Gen intel Core i7) that has been running 24/7 for years (including HyperV VM, 24/7 security cam recording, development software suites, etc) without a problem. I wish the desktop (business?) PCs my companies have provided at work were as performant and reliable for as long.

Sent using Tapatalk

 

[RMerlin]

Companies need to provide PCs that can take a beating because of all the security stuff (McAfee, Symantec, Tanium, FireEye, ... etc) the IT departments run on them, reduce other application performance, and burn them out prematurely. Compare disk i/o and cpu usage between a standard Windows installation and what Corporate IT departments do with their machines.

This applies to large companies however, not to small businesses or small offices.

 

[sfx2000]

And actually, some home usages are far more intensive than business usage. At work you run Word, Excel, Outlook, and do some light browsing. At home, you run video games, you stream Netflix and Youtube, and you download 20-40 GB games over your Internet connection. More intensive both on your computer and on your router.

Yes and no... the usage patterns are different, but the cost of failure is much higher in a SMB network vs. the Home...

Small Office here - 10 full time, plus 2 offsite - ER-X as the edge router, Dell N2024 managed switch to 14 ethernet drops, two WAP581's for office WiFi - organic growth over time. We don't do VPN, but have implemented a zero-trust model as most of our productivity is in the cloud, and dedicated app servers in DigitalOcean data centers. On prem - ATT business FTTP, 100Mbit/Sec, which costs us $1K/month

I'm not going to risk having a $300 consumer router doing the work, even though I sure it might be good enough..

 

[Klueless]

I'm not going to risk having a $300 consumer router doing the work, even though I sure it might be good enough..

As usual you make a valid point.

I have a part time job at a small company. I pick up cars, dump the trash, shovel snow and, occasionally, set up a computer or two. There are about 25 of us, 20 computers plus smart phones, coupla servers, networked printers, etc.

The only thing reliable about our network was it would go down every time there was work to do. I tried engaging professionals who would use professional grade equipment but between contracts, time block commitments, fios, service level agreements, jargon, enterprise pricing, etc. I felt like I was living a Dilbert cartoon

Virtually on a whim I bought a couple of N66Us (and a spare), a couple of range extenders (and a spare), a ladder, some lengths of pre-terminated CAT5E, signed a couple low end ISP contracts and threw it all together.

If I had used professional grade equipment I would have had to have read a manual and I would never have finished. Sometimes ya just gotta do what ya gotta do.

 

[coxhaus]

If I had used professional grade equipment I would have had to have read a manual and I would never have finished. Sometimes ya just gotta do what ya gotta do.

That would be true if you ran enterprise equipment. It is not true if you use Cisco small business equipment. The Cisco small business routers now have good wizards to configure them maybe answering a couple of basic questions like is this cable internet? They are very easy to setup. The wireless is just as easy. Yes it may not be the best setup as there is always tweaking but it is a solid setup. This has to be as easy as an ASUS router in my mind from the screen shots on this forum of the ASUS routers. I have never used an ASUS router but I follow some of threads here. Plus there are no scripts to install on the Cisco routers as everything is menu driven unlike the ASUS routers where you are installing scripts for this and that. The latest Cisco menu system is very good.

I always setup my Cisco small business routers and wireless using the wizards. It is too easy to forget things on a manual setup from scratch. It is faster for me as well. And I know Cisco small business.

PS
Klueless what was the brand of the setup which was going down all the time?

 

[coxhaus]

Y
Small Office here - 10 full time, plus 2 offsite - ER-X as the edge router, Dell N2024 managed switch to 14 ethernet drops, two WAP581's for office WiFi - organic growth over time. We don't do VPN, but have implemented a zero-trust model as most of our productivity is in the cloud, and dedicated app servers in DigitalOcean data centers. On prem - ATT business FTTP, 100Mbit/Sec, which costs us $1K/month

How do you like the WAP581 wireless APs? They work well for me and seem to work well with Apple devices. I know you know more about wireless than me so that is why I am asking.

 

[Klueless]

The Cisco small business routers now have good wizards

Didn't know so I couldn't. If I knew I might've. (I'm old, last time I saw Cisco anything they were thousands!)

Klueless what was the brand of the setup which was going down all the time?

One company, two sites about 5 miles apart. It's been years now but one site was an old G Netgear. The other site was a newer (single band N) Netgear which was replaced with a dual band N Linksys. Router problems were further complicated with ISP problems, traffic problems & stations hanging on the fringes of the signal range.

The N66Us did help but it was the Asus real time traffic monitors, Merlin enhancements, Ping Plotter & Acrylic that allowed us to start identifying problems; there were more than a few including dead stink bugs. QoS, bandwidth limiters, hardwire and range extenders fixed most of them. Identifying a bad router in the ISP cloud fixed the rest.

There are a lot of choices out there. Some bad, many good. I have a bias because those old N66Us opened up a whole new world for me.

 

[sfx2000]

How do you like the WAP581 wireless APs? They work well for me and seem to work well with Apple devices. I know you know more about wireless than me so that is why I am asking.

Got a deal on them from a friend that had surplus from a contract install.

Setting them up was pretty straightforward - 20MHz on 2.4, 40MHz on 5.0, two SSID's bound to VLAN's, CorpMain/CorpGuest.

Set them up and leave them alone after that, and they work well enough.

I'll need to replace the switch at some point - it's old, and asset recovery, so a lot of hours on it - stable enough though...

 

[System Error Message]

I must have sold hundred of PCs over 20+ years in this business. Acer was the only brand to give me such high failure rates.



I have a number of Asus routers in various offices. Quite a few using an RT-AC66U_B1 as their OpenVPN server. Some of these reaching close to a full year of uptime with zero issues.

You don't need a 300$ router to handle an office of 5-10.

depends, where i work my usb-c extension broad down the network, making the router unresponsive and disconnect from internet. However both routers they used were tplink and an expensive dlink when before this i've been suggesting mikrotik to them, even offered to lend my CCR and i know mikrotik is not affected by this and it is much harder for an ill configured device to bring down a mikrotik router than a consumer router.

But yes mikrotik routers are a lot cheaper too, so it holds true that you dont need an expensive router for a business but you do need a proper one.

With regards to acer, newer acers have decent quality and i'd argue that hp is just as bad if not worse and have not improved their pricing, selection and quality. Lenovo has dropped in their quality, pricing and selection meaning you get higher prices, lower end hardware, limited or pricey selections and quality has dropped too.

The biggest issue here is that on the lower end, some laptops are wrocking low end/low voltage dual core i5s with super low end nvidia GPUs, 4GB of ram, a super slow hard drive. Despite the budget line the i5 tricks people into thinking its good and almost every major laptop brand is guilty of selling this particular modal/range except for dell that have their own inspiron line. But the acer gamer or enthusiast line is cheaper and of decent quality so i would not discount them and dell has really bad board failures. Thankfully when my alienware board burned from gaming it was under warranty, but 5 other boards were sacrificed in order to fix it, all those i7s and 1070Ns wasted, only thing alienware was the only brand that had a 1070N that was actually equal to desktop in clocks so its a bit faster due to a bit of extra hardware.

If you want my recommendation for a laptop, acer is one of the brands, illegear, msi, asus. Although sadly on the low end many brands dont have good selections except for the chinese so dont discount xiami, huawei, etc.

If upgradeability is important, the chinese brands are a no go since they have the ram and storage soldered onboard to sell their service.