Workshop

Name Brand Versus Generic PCs
The components within most PCs are reasonably consistent:
• All PCs have a motherboard.
• All PCs are enclosed in a case, which also houses a power supply to run the entire operation.
• All motherboards house memory, a CPU, a chipset, and expansion slots for daughterboards.
• All motherboards use a BIOS to tie all its components together.
The differentiating factor between PCs tends to relate to the physical layout of components. My
experience has shown that cheap clones, as opposed to name-brand machines, can be poorly designed,
which can become a factor in situations requiring you to troubleshoot. Suppose, for example, that the PC
you’re troubleshooting sports a poorly placed motherboard jumper block that comes into contact with an
expansion card. (A jumper is a movable and removable mechanism that electrically ties two pins together
on the motherboard; a jumper block is a group of these pins, usually controlling some kind of
configuration of the motherboard.) All of a sudden, a jumper set that wasn’t connected becomes
connected through the metal of the expansion card bracket, and chaos ensues.
Clone PCs are often not compatibility tested with networks the way name-brand machines are, which can
add to the fun. The bottom line is this: Spending a few extra dollars for a name brand can help you avoid
problems.
Of course, buying a brand name doesn’t always mean that things work 100 percent of the time, and you
still might run into network issues. However, it’s important in a networked environment with large
numbers of PCs to be able to have some sort of accountability when things don’t work as
promised—which you don’t often get when buying from the here-today-gone-tomorrow clone market.
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