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[TheBoy]

Which reminds me, my bro reminded me I haven't upgraded his tills yet

*sigh*, no bugger sells desktop PCs now...

I tend to use misco for desktops. I've dumped lenovo's in as tills for the past 6 years-since they bought ibms desktop arm-and they have been very reliable.

Normally pick up cash back deals, every so ogre on lenovo's.
HP have some decent cashback on towers and sff's at the mo. i3, 4gig ram and windows 8 with downgrade rights for about £280 (ex vat).
No monitor included, but normally not an issue on a till swap.

They've proved equally, if not more reliable than the digipos stuff and infinitely better than the crap I flirted with from the aures touchpos range.

It will be the likes of Dell/HP for performance and reliability under relatively harsh conditions. It won't be Lenovo.

So Dell OptiPlex (as Vostro is discontinued) or HP Business (as definitely not their Pavilion/Presario junk)

[kevinp58]

The latest version of Win 8.1, which is about to ship,

Been out ages 

I believe there is a big update due at the end of the month. 

[Rods2]

The latest version of Win 8.1, which is about to ship,

Been out ages 

I believe there is a big update due at the end of the month. 

Correct, to fix some of the major usability problems that 8.1 didn't address.

[dbug]

The latest version of Win 8.1, which is about to ship, apparently makes the desktop side much better where it is much more divorced from Metro. . . . .

Not about to ship - its a automatic downloadable update available due April 8th.  Win 8.1 with this update incorporated won't "ship" for a while yet - loads of retail and oems no doubt exist in the retail chain still   Up to date  retail and oems take a while to come through "the chain" - likely the major "box shifters" will offer updated pre-installs a tad earlier

[jimbobmccoy]

Last time I ordered dells was about 6-7 years ago, (I'm sure it was a load of vostro 200's) when I think they'd decided to try cost saving by dropping quality of materials and components-out of about 30 machines about ten had issues ranging from nic failures to HDD failures. I was astonished by the failure rate at the time having replaced rock solid optiplex's and also never having encountered anything like it before. That coupled with the lack of legacy ports as an available option ruled them out for me. I believe it's around the time they decided to push their colourful consumer range and support it through cuts in their business aimed desktops.

Reliability wise I've had lenovo's sat in warehouses getting covered in dust and all sorts, on 24/7/365 for the last 5 years with no issues - serial and parallel ports as standard are an essential they meet too.

Saying that I am looking at 30 HP machines at the moment, I've found their laptops significantly better than the Lenovo equivalents of late.

One thing I find common among them all that does my head in though is all the bloatware they ship with now.

[TheBoy]

About 5 years ago was when the legacy ports started to disappear off all machines, and Dell tend to use reference Intel designs, so they were one of the first to lose them.

Although the plastic case isn't all that special, the Vostro 200/400 that we've used have all been flawless at my Bro's business, unlike all the no-name and self build ones, where the fans and disks tend to cause constant grief, due to a horrible, black, soot-like dust that plagues one of his sites.  Due to the reliability of the Vostros (and Dimensions before), that's what he wants, and as he's the one playing...   ...but he's shit out of luck, so OptiPlex is the only suitable Dell.

HP do some decent stuff, but need to avoid the consumer PCs, then you start paying premiums for management that he doesn't need, so price bumps up. He wouldn't be adverse to HP kit, due to the reliability of his HP servers and the majority of his printers (the last one that annoyed him went down 2 flights of stairs...  ...see a family resemblance )

Lenovo are out due to reliability and quirkiness with drivers/updates. Although nice and cheap, and outage on any of his tills is unacceptable.