I administer an environment of 3000 PC's of which most are Dell PC's and laptops. We also use some COmpaq and Toshiba. I must say that over 4 years of VERY hard use, the Dells have held up the best. We still have Dells' that are 266 PII boxes, and I just started to ordere 300 replacement units with P4 1.7 Ghz, 20 GB HD, and 512 MB RAM (yes, I support developers). As several people have already said thumbs up for Dell new or refurbished - should be able to do something fast for under $1000

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Bill Atkins
william.atkins@oracle.com
1985 Carrera Coupe

Down for TWO WEEKS!!!???
I would have thought two hours was closer to the mark.
Im assuming you have a small office with no in house tech support?
If so, you should change who ever you use for tech support.
If you do have in house tech support, fire them ASAP!!!

Anyway, anything that is recent tech will be more than OK for office work.

I often spec Dell PCs. But its much of a muchness with the bigger names. Sony laptop are cool.
If possible you should go for something with an AMD chip in it.
And get as much RAM as you can afford.
I reckon 256MB is a minimum nowadays.

If you do you not really have to have Windows PC then go and buy a Mac!!!
The new iBooks are a good price and very cool. If you ever wanna make home movies or burn your own Audio CDs, or make your own DVDs then a Mac is for you. Actually, if you ever want to do anything a Mac is better.

Also check out the Apple G4 PowerBook.
I have one and its the coolest thing on the planet short of a 911. Apple are the Porsche of the computing world.

Alex.