New PC’s for the office

Q™

Q™

IPCT Contributor
Feb 16, 2015
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3,987
Megatroplis, USA
I need to replace five (5) work stations at our office. Since we’re a poor company I was thinking of purchasing five (5) identical Dell Optiplex 7010 i7-3770 units. For $220.00, each unit comes with 8gb of ram but no drive and no OS. Each comes with a Windows 7 COA.

My plan was to purchase five (5) identical 250GB SSD’s, build a single machine configured with Win10 Pro + Acrobat 9 + Office Pro 2010 + some other software our people use.

I was then going to clone the single SSD to the other 4 SSD’s using Clonezilla...so I should end up with five (5) identical machines and (hopefully) all the software on each machine will be activated and fully functional...including the Win20 Pro OS.

Do you fellas think this will plan will work and result in all machines functional and activated?
 
If you think you are going to use 1 windows 10 key for 5 machines you will not be able to do that, Microsoft is smarter than that. They lock that key to your computer using the hardware config, cpu s/n or something to that effect. Now if you purchase 5 copies of win 10 pro and clone the machine before activation and activate after you do it you will be fine. I think I understood your question correct?
 
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You might consider imaging with FOG.

An i5 6500 would stretch your budget a little more, but is worth considering.
 
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Licenses could be an issue for Office too. MS may have a deal for Small Business if you buy five licenses etc.

Enterprises deploy software in a batch from a server or one source so that may be a better option than loading several discs one by one on each machine. I used to refurb computers and made slipstream discs with all service packs and updates included to make rebuilding a drive faster, but that was XP on DSL. I'm sure there are better ways now.
 
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Thanks fellas!
 
Is there still a FREE upgrade path from Win7 Pro to Win10 Pro?
 
Q™ said:
Is there still a FREE upgrade path from Win7 Pro to Win10 Pro?
Click to expand...

Not any more per MS ==>> here. :(

EDIT: 1/18 @ 0708 CT: apparently there was an extension that expired 2 days ago on Jan. 16th of 2018, according to Tech Republic ==>> here.
 
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Q™ said:
I need to replace five (5) work stations at our office. Since we’re a poor company I was thinking of purchasing five (5) identical Dell Optiplex 7010 i7-3770 units. For $220.00, each unit comes with 8gb of ram but no drive and no OS. Each comes with a Windows 7 COA.

My plan was to purchase five (5) identical 250GB SSD’s, build a single machine configured with Win10 Pro + Acrobat 9 + Office Pro 2010 + some other software our people use.

I was then going to clone the single SSD to the other 4 SSD’s using Clonezilla...so I should end up with five (5) identical machines and (hopefully) all the software on each machine will be activated and fully functional...including the Win20 Pro OS.

Do you fellas think this will plan will work and result in all machines functional and activated?
Click to expand...

What's wrong with the current machines? Lots of times a clean install of OS solves lots of issues.
Throw in a 128gb SSD, and it'll run like a top again.
 
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Hey thanks for all the ideas fellas. I ended up purchasing these...

$299.00 per unit
Dell Optiplex 7010 SSF
Intel Core i7 3770 @ 3.4 GHZ
16GBS DDR3 Memory
180GB SSD
DVD-RW
Windows 10 Professional
Free shipping
 
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Q™ said:
Hey thanks for all the ideas fellas. I ended up purchasing these...

$299.00 per unit
Dell Optiplex 7010 SSF
Intel Core i7 3770 @ 3.4 GHZ
16GBS DDR3 Memory
180GB SSD
DVD-RW
Windows 10 Professional
Free shipping
Click to expand...

Not bad! What was the source?
 
eBay.
 
Ivy Bridge is a good CPU generation. I built six i7-3770K systems back when they were new. Five of them are still in regular use and one I just replaced this month with an i7-8700K to boost my Blue Iris frame rates. I don't think there has been a K model CPU with a 77 watt TDP since then; they've all been in the 90s I believe.
 
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