Ordering bits online

It cracks me up how hard ordering equipment can be. This afternoon at work it took me two hours to order a couple hard drives, a couple video cards and a couple sticks of RAM.

Drives

I had to track down the guy who used the other two drives we had lying around. Then I had to get him to crack open the the computer he used them in to get the model numbers. Once I had that, it was a snap going straight to that vendor and filling in the paperwork for the orders.

These are to replace drives used for a server where they were not intended. Now I hear we need to move files on the system we just stole the drives from. Figures. This makes for more work later on.

Video Cards

Hunt down what kind of slot we have on the machines. Figure out what we ordered for similar systems before. Lucky me, we still had one of the boxes lying around. Find the board on a couple sites and pick the cheapest one that looks like they are not full of crap. Fill in the paperwork.

The cards are for new computers we ordered. The computers are so cheap, that it makes sense upgrading the video card that comes on the motherboard. That video card is so frigging bad that it is unusable.

RAM

OK. This one is the one that took me the longest. I look up on Dell for the replacement hardware. They want way too much for it. I track down the same thing on other web sites. There is no same thing. I start searching for similar things that really look like they match what Dell used. Find a ton of crap. Can't pick the cheapest because they look like assholes. Settle on an Amazon seller. Dell wanted $90 for two gigabytes of RAM for this system. I found roughly the same thing for $33. It sure looks like it will work, but I have my fingers crossed.

I didn't have the heart to tell the person who needs this RAM that they have a 32 bit version of Windows XP and there for will not be able to use all the RAM. They already have two gigabytes and the OS only seems to use three. It will report four gigabytes, but not use it.

Time

These actions took me about two hours. I cannot believe it took this long. What happened? There must have been some distractions or something that came up that caused me to spend time elsewhere. I do not remember it if it happened. Nope, that bit of surfing and filling in paperwork took two full hours.