What level of support do I need?

There are three types of warranty coverage available. When you experience a problem, you’re almost always best served by a quick internet search check of your problem, since sometimes this can resolve the issue within minutes. From there, if you bought a prebuilt computer, the company that built it will offer some period of warranty protection for some amount of cost. This hierarchy shows the general value of each level of warranty and what you should look for from a vendor. 

The best support is never needed in the first place. Reducing hardware failures by using high quality components with high quality cooling and assembling it well is the best defense against downtime. Next up, having a good call center is key. Since every service call beings with a call center, the better the call center the more useful the warranty service plan. After that, having a good part replacement policy, preferably where parts are sent rather than the whole system, reduces downtime waiting for the mail. Finally, having onsite services available can be advantageous, especially if a hardware failure coincides with a crunch in the office. 

Different vendors provide different support options. All of the support avenues start with a phone call. This phone call will use more or less time you could be billing depending on the quality of the call center. The larger vendors outsource their support and it can be hit and miss. Smaller, boutique vendors will provide more customized US-based support. Boxx, BIMBOX, and Puget Systems support are US-based and have some familiarity with professional architectural software, which improves their chances of knowing how to triage your support issue. The smaller companies are generally more likely to have a short wait time and a knowledgeable support rep. 

An on-site warranty is available from Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Boxx. The quality and responsiveness of the field technicians vary from tech to tech, so you may get mixed results. However, it can be a game changer to have someone come in, usually next business day, to perform a hardware repair or replacement for you when you really need it. 

That said, supporting your own system isn’t quite as daunting and difficult as it may sound. If you assembled it following a video or build guide, you know which parts are which. You can replace the parts yourself, usually for a few hundred dollars or less. These parts do carry warranties once you have diagnosed a failed part, but replacement is almost always a better plan than waiting for service and shipping across the Pacific twice. In addition, since you chose the components, you likely chose the highest quality pieces available. These are the least likely to break after the initial break-in period of a few weeks has passed. 

Regardless of the level of support you choose, there should be an extra workstation available in case a computer goes down. This could be a laptop used for client presentations or a leftover from the last round of workstations that was upgraded. Even the best support will cost hundreds of dollars of downtime, so the best solution is redundancy. Storing your data on Dropbox and a NAS, as advocated in this guide, keeps your data loss minimal and keeps your ability to have an employee jump to a new workstation. Software licensing can be tricky if one is checked out to a down machine, but there will be some procedure that you can call and work through to get up and running shortly. 

Having a single source to call and walk you through support is a nice option. And further, having an on-site warranty available can save significantly on downtime. But sometimes that warranty comes after a much longer phone call due to call center quality. The part was more likely to fail because of computer component quality. So, at the high end, there is Boxx, offering on-site warranties and industry-knowledgeable representatives along with high quality modular components that are less likely to fail. A great middle option is Puget Systems or Digital Storm, who offer good call centers and somewhat less convenient mail-based support options, but again with high quality components that are less likely to fail over time. Supporting your own system saves you money up front, and you will use some of that savings to replace components that fail. Since computers are more reliable than in the past, support is a less important question than it has been historically, but it’s still an inevitable downtime cost and should be managed.