Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!

We really appreciate all the kind words you gave us when we announced our entry as one of the Houston 100 fastest-growing companies. The awards luncheon is this Friday, September 6^th, from 11:30 – 1:30 at the George R. Brown Convention Center. About 1,500 people are expected to attend this year’s event. You can find out more about the award and the event on the Small Business Development Center’s web site at www.sbdc.uh.edu. If you would like to attend this energetic luncheon, please call us right away at 713-861-4183.

Reliability and Serviceability

Our philosophy here at Clerc Computer Consulting is to recommend to you the most reliable – and not necessarily the least expensive – hardware and service solutions. Our experience has shown us that you will usually spend more on repair bills (from us) if you buy the cheapest solution than if you had paid the extra money up front for a more reliable product. So if you want to spend the least amount of money on the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), then read on and buy your products from the best companies on these lists.

Our information on reliability comes from PC Magazine. Every year they publish the results of a survey that was sent to a random sampling of magazine subscribers and visitors to their web site at www.pcmag.com. The results for both reliability and service were converted into a grade from A to E. The complete results were published in the August issue, and are available on their web site. If a company is not listed below, that means they did not receive enough votes to be accurately listed. Here is a summary of their results for desktop PCs, notebooks, servers, printers, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and Internet service providers (ISPs).

Desktop PCs – The only company to get an overall grade of A for both office and home desktop computers is Dell. Gateway (B+), locally built (B+), Micron, and Sony earned a B. Acer, IBM and Hewlett-Packard (D-) earned a D. The companies that earned an E were Compaq and eMachines.

Notebook PCs – Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Toshiba earned the grade of A for both office and home notebooks. Dell (B+), Fujitsu and Sony (B-) earned a B. Gateway earned a C. Micron earned a D. Acer, Compaq and NEC earned an E.

Servers – Dell, Sun and locally built servers earned the grade of A. IBM earned a B+. Compaq and Micron earned a D. Gateway and Hewlett-Packard earned an E.

Printers – Hewlett-Packard (A+) and Epson earned an A overall on ink jet, laser and multifunction printers. Brother and Panasonic earned a B. Lexmark (D+), Okidata and Canon (D-) earned a D. Compaq and Xerox earned an E.

PDAs – Handspring (A+) and Sony earned an A overall for personal digital assistants. Hewlett-Packard and Palm earned a B-. Compaq earned a C+. Sharp earned a D. Casio and Psion earned an E.

ISPs were divided into dial-up and broadband (DSL and cable). For dial-up Internet service providers, local ISPs (such as Everyones Internet and PDQ.net) earned an A. AT&T WorldNet and EarthLink earned a B+. Juno, NetZero and Prodigy (C-) earned a C. MSN earned a D-. AOL earned an E.

Only those broadband ISPs that are available in the Houston area are listed here. Road Runner earned an A-. Local ISPs earned a B+. EarthLink (C+), AT&T Broadband (C-) and Verizon Online (C-) earned a C. AOL and SBC (Southwestern Bell) earned a D-.

Financial Respect and Abundance