Technibble completed a poll recently on the brands that technicians LOVE & HATE, and it was a GREAT confirmation for us here at PI as we state many of the same ‘love & hate’ brands as well.

So we decided to put together a short list of some top technology brands we LOVE:

PC:  Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba – Generally support and warranties for these products beat out the competition.  Our clients need resolutions not script reading or hours of troubleshooting, these vendors tend to be top when it comes to PC’s

Networking Equipment:  Cisco – reliability, stability, support and upward mobility blow away the competition when it comes to networking equipment.  You may want to save a few bucks and go with other vendors, however, by the time your done, we have found that you could have purchased a Cisco piece for the price you paid in troubleshooting other vendors.

Printers:  Canon and Brother – Hands down these printers have the best green footprint, to include print cartridges without breaking the bank.  Support is fantastic and the software for these machines comes with excellent diagnostic tools, easy setup, and no bloatware that many other vendors tend to put in their software. 

Software:  Microsoft – Microsoft software works.  There are many other options out there, but support is the main reason for our recommendation when it comes to Microsoft.  We have seen their engineers go the extra mile to resolve client issues without charging an arm and a leg or worse, not responding as many other third party applications seem to do.  If it does ‘break’ it has probably been documented and a solution posted.

Audio/Visual:  Integra, Anthem, Pioneer Elite – performance, support, reliability, and plays well with others, no big box stores, specialty vendors only.

Control System:  Crestron, Savant, Vantage, Lutron, Logitech, Universal Remote – they do what they say they will do, fully customizable, excellent support.

TV/DVD:  Samsung, Epson (projector), Sharp – performance, competitively priced, support is good, wide range of SKU.

Cameras:  Panasonic – reliable, hosted site for easy deployment of external ip,

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Some equipment we have HATED

PC:  HP, Gateway, Emachines – excessive bloatware, lack of support, and weird peripherals.

Networking equipment:  Dlink – support is atrocious, hardware fails frequently.  Airport Base Station – lack of support, does not play well with others, hard to customize, open ports, or manually configure as the ‘wizard’ constantly wants to take over.

Printers:  HP and Lexmark – software is excessive, takes a long time to load, and to uninstall (HP), sometimes you have to use special utilities to remove it. Loads bloatware that hangs resources and slows down boot time.  Once it is updated from original install there is a 50/50 chance it fails or throws up software conflicts.  Support is atrocious and non-existent.  You can can ‘Google’ it and find out that 5 million other users are probably having the same problem (even on the HP site!!!) and there is no solution.

Software:   Apple and Adobe – both load unnecessary utilities, constantly being updated with large updates, bonjour is constantly wrecking havoc on networking protocols, and makes system changes by default that you may not want to make.  Apple OS does not upgrade well.

Audio/Visual:  Sony – support, support, support – enough said

Control System: Phillips Pronto – hardware made by one company, software made by another, and no support for any of it.

TV/DVD:  Runco – support and reliability was very poor

Cameras: Trendnet, Honeywell and Cisco – does not play well with others, cheaply made, and products are quickly discontinued.  When it comes to Cisco – overpriced, limited selection, and lack of competitiveness with Panasonic, lack of a consumer level weatherproof camera.

DISCLAIMER:  These are the opinions of Progressive Integrations, Inc., and are based upon our history with these vendors and products.  If you have had success/failure with them, or found that it may not be as described in your situation – we realize that brands/vendors can change, however, this was a present snapshot for us.

Tags: Anthem, brother, canon, cisco, Crestron, dell, HP, Integra, lenovo, Logitech, Lutron, microsoft, Pioneer Elite, Samsung, savant, toshiba, Vantage