My wife and I moved our accounting business home and started working over the internet before cloud accounting became popular. Even today clients still have mainly desktop based software. So computers and internet access are essential to us.
We buy a new PC each every four years - so the company buys one every two years. We always buy Windows Pro - previously for the XP feature - but still want to stick with that.
Our last machine (my wife's) was no Pro - so we bought an upgrade at the time. But when we upgraded to 8.1 it went to home - turns out some genious decided laptops would have the Windows code burnt in. Our supplier eventually fixed it - but we've now been burned and won't got there again. My wife has avoided upgrading to 10 (despite how horrible 8 is) because we can't find out if it will again downgrade us.
Our needs aren't lavish - but four years is a long time in technology. We avoid bleeding edge - but always buy above the basic. So my four-year old machine is still fine with 1.5Gb disk - but could do with more soon. Ditto with 16 Gb RAM.
In the Hutt everything is cheap - even the expensive machines have the standard Windows rather than Pro. So we always pop into Wellington and visit PB Tech. Even before we moved our office home, we did that - they've always been great - and fixed our 8.1 downgrade issue. But this year haven't come up with anything suitable. They're still to come back to me on the latest - but the fact it's been a while I suspect it ain't happening.
So I'm looking for somewhere else - and probably will have to go further afield (like AK). This saddens me - but at least I can see what others here suggest, both in terms of reliable support and actual machines.
This last has definite brand preferences. Our last several machines have all need ASUS. Before that Toshiba and Lenovo (was IBM when we bought our first Thinkpad). There are more brands we don't like - so prefer to stick with these.
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