The "Art" of Computer Construction
One of my suppliers was recently quite shocked when I changed the specifications of our computer builds. I specified things that the supplier hadn't thougth were necessary, and I was prepared to pay much more for these changes. It got me thinking about what I actually want from computers for the office.

As a result there was a second set of revisions. We now have two computer classes that we install in our office.
Class One: General Computer.
These tend to be used around the office, by "casual" users, for running office apps, accessing the web, data entry and reading e-mail. We used to get Pentium 4 class computers for this. Now we get VIA Mini-ITX units, running the smallest HDDs we can get and a single stick of 256Mb DDR. The most expensive component, by far is the software.
Class Two: Workstation.
These are what we source for our higher end users. They tend to have a "core" app that they'll use and we optomise around this. These machines tend to have much more up market CPUs, Motherboards and Videocards. These days I specify HT Enabled P4s, Midrange Gigabyte motherboards, and either 4X00 class GeForce vidcards or 8X00 class Radeons. They either get a large HDD or even RAID if I think storage is what they need. These machines are the ones I spend the most time speccing. My specification includes dust filters, rounded cables, at least one DECENT cooling fan (often 2), and a chunky power supply. These peple are the ones that will be doing our serious work on computers. They don't want or need system failure. An extra $400 worth of bits that doubles the system uptime for them is money well spent. I also tend to specify a minimum class for the onboard extras.

Maybe I'm being fussy, but once I have explained my logic, most people involved agree with me. It seems to make sense to spend the money now rather than pay at a much higher rate later.

Must admit though, Sun's announcement of an attempt to make an easy to use Linux Desktop could drop the cost of our mini-stations by a heap, and make the problems of people installing junk just go away!